


Sofie

by JakeDov



Series: The Skyrim Chronicles [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Coming Out, Eventual Fluff, Feels, Hope, Love, M/M, Other, Romance, friendship feels, love is stronger than hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 04:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11570019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JakeDov/pseuds/JakeDov
Summary: Right after outing himself the day before in front of his entire family (see chapter 1 of the series), Ralof is confused and uncomfortable and Haithabu soon notices something is wrong. Now, they are on their way to Windhelm together, where Ralof has to attend a Stormcloak meeting to which he was urgently summoned the week before by Galmar. Haithabu accompanies him, desperate to spend more quality time with his vulnerable boyfriend and not to let him out of his watchful eyes just yet. They originally just wanted to spend a nice quiet night together, before they have to part ways again for Talos knows how long, but it soon all turns out so much different than they planned and Haithabu starts musing...





	Sofie

Sofie

“You know,” said Ralof suddenly and rather abruptly, as if he was continuing a regular conversation and giving his answer to something I had just said, even though both of us had spent the last two or three hours riding next to each other in utter silence. “This is going to be curious.”  
Torn away from my own private thoughts and the things Hod had said to and about us three days ago when we had hurriedly left Riverwood behind and set out together towards Windhelm to comply with the urgent missive Ralof had received from his commanders, and of course to escape his intolerant brother-in-law, I was not immediately up to speed and didn’t know what he was talking about. I had been riding on my obediently trotting steed who was faithfully and without any further instructions happily following the road to the bend and didn’t need to be encouraged or driven on, simply kept going completely on her own, so that I was allowed to stare into the middle distance distractedly, lost in thought and pass through Skyrim dreaming with my eyes wide open. Ra didn’t look at me now, simply kept squinting into the distance and when I followed his glance I could see the square block that was stony Windhelm rise on its towering cliff in the distance, like the jagged tooth of a disproportional giant´s maw dropped on the face of the earth in heedless passing. Windhelm was a very grey and dismal city in my eyes and the fact that it seemed to be constantly engulfed in winter, winds and frosty rime did nothing to mollify my enormous dislike for the massive nordic dwelling. It sat on rocky turf, built onto a high-rise cliff surrounded by deep gorges of water on three of four sides and encircled by a great granite wall many times the height of any man, elf or even giant that walked the entirety of Tamriel. Legend had it, these walls were the highest defensive structures ever built by mankind anywhere in the known universe and that not even a dragon could claw its way in easily. Seeing the city as I did – with the trained glance of a warrior instinctively looking for weak spots and possible openings in any defensive structure, as well as with the disapproving eyes of a wood elf preferring any nature at all to the cold and bleak stone dwellings the people in this region seemed to favour so much over any living and breathing building materials – it was not hard at all to imagine its indestructibleness, I had no trouble imagining Windhelm as the impenetrable fortress the Nords had worked so hard to build and make endure through the centuries. No matter the myths circulating this ancient town or its actual history like the mages and scribes liked to tell it, I didn’t care about either of both, point of fact was, I always felt puny and small inside these imposing walls and couldn’t help but notice a stony weight crushing my heart from all sides, pinching off my breath and making me feel as dead inside as I felt this city was in itself. It was depressing and strangely unsettling to pass through the gate and I tried to avoid the dwelling altogether, whenever I was able to. Furthermore, as I said, it was always winter here, always cold and I always felt either wet or frozen, but definitely always pretty much uncomfortable, so, in general, it was my least favourite place to be in all of Skyrim. I watched the tall stone structures and wind-bent buildings of Windhelm emerge from the cloudy haze obscuring the town proper as we drew ever closer on our inexorable way towards its front gates and sighed inwardly. If it weren’t for Ralof and his job, I wouldn’t care to venture this far north at all.  
“What do you mean?”, I asked, still distracted and caught up in my own thoughts.  
“I am just saying that this is the first real dwelling we have come to since… you know,” Ralof answered hesitantly. “The first city we are entering where we actually know people and I am just wondering how all of this will turn out. If it can end well at all.”  
“Why do you say that?”, I asked with a scowl.  
“Well, nobody has ever seen us together, have they?”, said Ralof. “Except Zulu and Maryse, but they are my friends, our friends. They wouldn’t tell anyone. The others, though, are not likely to take this lightly.”  
“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I mean, Stormcloaks are supposed to be open-minded and stuff, just as long as they can fight the Empire unhindered and nobody stands in their way between them and Sovngarde. That´s what you always tell me anyways. I don’t think anyone will care about us.” I cocked my head and looked at him thoughtfully. “This is about us, isn’t it?”  
Ra emitted a very ambiguous noise and shrugged his shoulders once more. These days, I got the impression both of us rather did a lot of shrugging.  
“I guess so,” he said, a bit helplessly.  
“You´re worrying that people will… what exactly? Say something? Do something?” Another elaborate shrug, but still, he had no definite answer. I think I knew what was bothering him and why he was suddenly so anxious, but I couldn’t say I understood, even though I spent long minutes trying. I finally gave up and gave a minute shrug of my own. “Are you bothered about something or someone in particular or is it anything more comprehensive in nature?”  
“I don’t really know,” he said. “It just feels… odd. All of it.” He wiped his brow thoughtfully and continued quickly as soon as he noticed me looking at him with raised eyebrows and incomprehension probably showing across my features. “I just mean, I´ve spent my entire life hiding this side of me, this… thing that makes me different. I´ve been so careful around anyone and have done everything I could to conceal what I really felt like. I´ve never allowed myself to go down this road before, have always tried to keep it closed, keep it in. And now it´s out and it just feels like… I don’t know, Tabu,” he sighed. “Talking about my feelings isn’t really one of my particular strengths.”  
“But I am,” I said softly. “Or, at least, I am trying to be. So, if you want to, I will listen. It is important to talk about things like that, I told you before, and whatever you are feeling, I want you to know that I am here for you, okay?”  
He nodded and flicked a stray leaf from Henna´s mane distractedly, before he continued.  
“I´m just saying, I am not used to living it on the outside. You may be, but I am not you and I really want to show everyone that I love you, just like I have secretly wanted to since we first met, just like other couples do it all the time. It seems so easy, yet somehow impossible… I just don’t know how. I would like to have your confidence, your will to go on, to see things through, but when I think about just walking in there and upsetting the apple cart it keeps me thinking I am letting loose everything I lived up till now to protect so hard, and this feeling it´s just something really strange. It feels somehow like walking through town naked, stripped down to nothing at all, baring everything I have ever worked so hard to protect. It gives me the creeps.”  
I snorted, erupting into spontaneous amusement, not able to keep that one in, though his words still found its mark and the pain struck home.  
“Would it help if you just stripped for real and actually did walk naked through Windhelm? I´d even hold your hand while you do it, if you want me to. People would certainly not take offence at our love, then, being much more occupied with certain other things, and you´d have to be embarrassed about something else entirely, something other than being afraid of people seeing who you truly are. You think it could work?”  
“Tabu,” exclaimed Ra indignantly, looking at me accusingly. “I am trying to confess in you here. I hate this kind of talk and I hate what I feel right now and you know it. This is not funny. It is how I feel. And it feels like crap, if you´d care to listen to me at all. I don’t know what to do.”  
Sobered up, I gripped the reins of my own steed a little bit tighter and returned his sombre look earnestly.  
“I am listening, darling,” I responded. “And I am sorry. Personally, I don’t feel that way, but I get why you do and I am glad that you talk to me about it. But I don’t see the need to do anything about it. We´ll just conduct ourselves the way we usually do and everything will work out just fine, I am sure of it. After all, there´s nobody who wants to kill us or anything. Well, at least I hope so. But even if there were, most people simply do not have the skill to kill either of us, so you needn’t worry about that one.”  
“I am not afraid of being killed,” chuntered Ralof under his breath.  
“Then just tell me what you are afraid of,” I said very quietly and reached across to place a cold hand on his warm forearm. “It´s the only way I can help you, isn’t it?”  
He swallowed hard, and spoke hoarsely after clearing his throat several times. “Rejection,” he whispered finally. “Condemnation. Repulsion. Losing the respect of my men and my superiors. Being shunned, being hated, becoming an outsider, all of these things and more. Tabu, I just…”  
I nodded, secretly hurt deep inside by this confession, by the way he could still spend so much time thinking about these kinds of things, yet equally glad that he was still utterly honest and straightforward about what discomforted him this much.  
“Should I go and leave you to attend to the Jarl alone? If you feel uncomfortable with all of this, if it is going too fast for you, just tell me. Do you want us to stop?”  
He didn’t answer a long time, just kept staring into the middle distance before Henna´s bobbing head. Then, he shrugged his shoulders once more and said so quietly that I almost couldn’t make out single words. “Yes… no… I don’t know. What do you think?”  
“You know my attitude regarding all of this. It hasn’t changed since the weekend. It´s your decision now. This is your city, after all. I´ll stand by whatever you decide. Just know, I am not sure why you keep fretting about all these things at all. I understand that it is not easy for you, but you are not alone, Ra. We are in this together, we´ve always been, and we can make it work together. I know that, I know that together, we are finally strong enough to see this through. So, let´s just… do it, okay?”  
“What about my men?”, he said miserably.  
“What about them?”  
“Do you think they will just accept me? Do you think they will still listen to me, still follow my orders, still abide by my decisions and obey my command if they find out about us?”  
“I don’t see a reason why they shouldn’t. None of this has anything to do with you coming out or not. It´s not their business either way, and it certainly shouldn’t make a difference whether they know whom you love or not.”  
“Yeah, that´s your opinion, for one.”  
“That´s how it is, Ralof,” I said with emphasis. “It is none of their concern, no matter how nosy or inquisitive the whole lot may be. You are still their commander, their immediate superior. They will follow you. They´ll have to.”  
“What if Ulfric or Galmar may think I am not fit for the task anymore, what if they deem me unfit and degrade me?”  
“You are not serious, are you?”, I asked incredulously. He looked hurt and insecure and miserable, but still very, very serious on top of that. I shook my head in irritation. “Nobody will degrade you, Ralof. You are a Stormcloak captain and a fairly excellent one on top of it. This is entirely beside the point. None of these things has anything to do with whom you sleep with at night!”  
“I know that,” he replied quite forcefully and Henna gave an unfriendly gasp. “I know that, Tabu,” Ralof continued a little bit quieter. “But I am not sure if they do. After all, they are old and they are irredeemably stuck in their ways, much as the rest of the nordic society. It is not my fault that people like us are considered weird and unnatural and bad.”  
“Do you think you´re unnatural or weird?”, I asked, finally able to ask what had made me worry for quite some time now. Seeing how he always spoke of this, seeing how he still mistook our love for something unusual or different, I just had to make sure at long last. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me, I knew that he did, but sometimes he said things like this and I was not entirely sure any more what exactly to believe, what exactly it was that he himself believed to be or not to be. He was shy and introverted even though it didn’t show all that much when he stood in front of his unit and assumed the role of the benevolent commander, but I knew him more intimately than that, knew how he truly was in private, and I had the impression that he still suffered from the violent and quite extensive brain-washing his accursed people subjected him to when he was younger. I bit my lips now and refused to feel cheap, rejected or unwanted. “Because all of this can only work if you´ve accepted yourself just the way you are. If you don’t want to change a thing, don’t want to alter anything in your personality even if you had the means to. It can only start to feel comfortable on the outside after you´ve started to feel comfortable on the inside. So, do you feel comfortable with who you are? With loving me?”  
“Of course I feel comfortable with you,” said Ra immediately, though from the way he averted his eyes and kept shifting around, I knew it was not the entire truth. I also refrained from pointing out that this was not exactly the right answer to my question. “But that doesn’t mean everyone will. Personally, I don’t think we´ll have an easy time in Windhelm.”  
“You think they are gonna take offense?”  
He shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. “I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone will react. I am just saying we should be prepared for any eventuality.”  
“Then I don’t see why this is a problem. After all, we are not going to run around town kissing and doing it in front of everyone else. It is just a regular visit on a regular tour to the new capital of Skyrim. We are both Stormcloaks – more or less, at least – and have come to report for a mission, just like we did a thousand times before. I don’t see why anyone should give a damn if we come separate as always, or if for the first time ever we are together. I don’t even know why you are thinking about these things at all. Sooner or later people are going to find out, and as we agreed we didn’t want to hide any more I figure now´s as good a time as any, don’t you think?”  
“Yeah, probably,” he agreed, sighing heartfelt. “And I don’t wanna flog anything to death here, but my unit, Galmar and Ulfric – anyone, really – is bound to notice, right? And I just want to be prepared for any eventuality.”  
“Yeah, you keep saying that. But don’t you think they are mature enough to leave us be? I mean, we are not exactly flaunting, are we? Besides, I am pretty sure basically neither of them really cares how anyone spends his spare time. The Stormcloaks I know are quite understandable and easy to get along with in general, most of the times, so I guess this can as easily be transferred to personal situations as well. I am pretty sure at least the men and women of your unit will be just fine. I have seen how they look at you, how they see someone truly amazing in their captain whenever they follow you. They love you, Ralof. Do you really think they care about whom you sleep with enough to judge you?”  
“They know enough about me to care. I know what crap they give each other whenever they find out which girl or guy one of them hooked up with, be it for a night only, or for the length of any campaign, hell, I´ve participated in all of it, and none of that was ever particularly nice. It´s just the way all of us are around each other.”  
I snorted. “So what, just don’t listen to them. You don’t know what they said about me behind my back when I first joined the rebellion. If I´d listened to the ways they cursed and spat at me behind my back I would have jumped from the access bridge into the deep bay below on the first evening in the Jarl´s palace. None of them were particularly friendly, none of them was prepared to believe they could come to tolerate an “abomination” like me in their midst. I am pretty sure that you don’t want to know what else they said. It only gets worse from there, but this is not my point. The point is, you were there for me, you were the only one who believed in me from the beginning and I learned to blot the other´s hate and aggressions out. And now, today, many of the formerly condemning, hating specimen, are some of my closest friends and fighting brothers. So, no matter what happens, I will be there for you, and we will go through everything that awaits us together, looking out for each other, okay? Just as always.”  
“They gave you a hard time back then? I had no idea,” he said, consternated. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have put a stop to it. I could have talked to them. What exactly did they say?”  
“Nothing, okay,” I retorted. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t listen to it. I just ignored them, and by now most of them seem to be just fine with an elf amongst their ranks, no matter his motives or his… ugly ears, how they called them. So, just ignore any comments and you´ll be fine. It worked for me, why shouldn’t it work for you?”  
“Because this is different. I mean, I get what you´re saying,” answered Ra. “But you being an elf, that´s another matter entirely. This is… more personal, more delicate, and much more frowned upon by everyone. You´ll see for yourself. I won´t be the only one they pick on.”  
“Personally, I think they won´t say a thing,” I said. “I think that, as soon as they find out that their divine captain has a boyfriend they´ll be at a loss and completely confused for a start. And then, sooner rather than later, they will get around to the fact that it is okay, just as long as we show them that we are okay, and they´ll be fine. Or they will to a man be too embarrassed to ever speak of it and thus will keep their traps shut. Either way, isn’t that exactly what we want?”  
“Is it?”, Ralof asked and finally met my eyes briefly. Henna snorted and threw back her head in a sharp nod as if she was agreeing with me, though it could also just be the fact that the familiar stables of Windhelm had as of yet come into view – and for her, into smelling distance – at the end of the road, a low amalgamation of ramshackle sheds and leaning stone structures, which gave both horses a new and rather sudden burst of energy and provided for a last and enthusiastic motivation boost. Henna started to trot and my own mare soon followed suit. “I mean, do we want to be tiptoed around of and handled with kid gloves all the time, or do we in fact want to be treated like everyone else? I really can´t seem to make up my mind about all these feelings and stuff.”  
I scowled even deeper than before when I realized it had not been a rhetorical question at all and Ralof was seriously waiting for an honest answer. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to sound lighter than I felt. “You´re overthinking things, darling. It will be the way it´s meant to be. There´s nothing we can do to influence what people are thinking. And anyways,” I added as I slid from my steed´s back and my feet hit the solid earth for the first time the entire day, causing me to wobble briefly, feeling a bit unsteady on my feet, adjusting my mind and conscience back to walking for myself. I pulled the rein over my horse´s neck and led her off the cobbled road and down the wide pathway towards the boxes. “Didn’t we agree that we didn’t care about any of this anymore? I thought we were in accord to just be who we are, without trying to make anything of what others say about us. You don’t regret this decision, do you?”  
“Of course I don’t,” replied Ralof at once, maybe a little bit too quickly to be entirely true to himself. “I´m just saying…”  
I sighed as I led the way under the ramshackle shelter to hand off our horses and then stepped into the building to pay the fee. The stable owner and groom at the same time – Ulundil, a High Elf and about the only representative of his haughty kind I could stand and even actually kind of liked – came to meet us by the door and we agreed on a reasonable price for two days of taking care of our most precious means of transportation. He smiled at both Ralof and me happily and inquired about how we had been since we last saw each other. I had in fact not been in Windhelm for a few months – too caught up with the Dawnguard and their mission for Skyrim to leave the Rift for longer than a few days in a row, most of them just to meet with Ralof in secret somewhere between here and there – but Ralof and Ulundil seemed to be on quite friendly terms. I scrunched up my nose in impatience and Ulundil was quick to apologize for the stench (“I am awfully sorry, my Thane, the smells are everything but pleasant, but it is a stable, after all. If you´d like to, my wife will fetch you–“. I cut him off there and then, as this was not at all what my displeasure came from). I stood by, feeling quite on edge and tried not to get pissed off as Ra and the affable elf took their fair time finishing their reunion and when they finally took their leave I was silently sorry that I could not be as nice to Ulundil right now as he probably deserved it. He did not live an easy life, not here, not as an elf, not in the heartland of Skyrim, in the middle of the most nordic stronghold in all of Tamriel. Elves were not really liked anywhere in Skyrim, not outside their own countries and provinces anyways, and much less in Windhelm that had taken in quite many refugees of the Dark Elves after they had had to flee Morrowind, I had a lot of first-hand experience to know what I was talking about in this respect, but Ulundil and his wife had persevered and were trying, against all odds. And on top of that, both of them were usually quite friendly to all kinds of folks who came by their doors, no matter their apparition, their clothing or their appearance. And for that, they deserved all the friendliness and the respect I could muster in turn.  
Nevertheless, I was glad when we had left the stables and their masters behind and were crossing the manually masoned arch of stone that spanned the deep fjord-like gorge leading towards the southern city gates many hundred feet over the black waters of a partly iced-over bay. It was at the same time the only entrance into Windhelm by land, the only other way into town was further east and granted passage to the Jarl´s palace from down by the waterside and was a route of direct access for the trading townsfolk to the busy harbour that was bustling and flourishing even in the direst winter. After all, with snow more often than not blocking the high mountain paths and passages into the lower plains of non-mountainous Skyrim beyond the range of peaks framing in Windhelm on three sides and cutting it off from the rest of the heartland many leagues to the south, the harbour and its ever busy waterways with traffic from all the rest of the province and the entire Empire was the only thing preventing the city from starving in the cold and at the same time the only direct connection point between the province and the dominion of Solstheim, a lonely – and mostly pretty creepy – volcanic island in the sea off the coast of Morrowind. This landward passageway we were walking across now was heavily fortified with guards posted every few feet and a few heavily manned, defensive lookout towers built on top of the massive bridge structure to the left and right of the actual access route. The situation in and around Windhelm had gotten even worse than ever before, since the civil war had started and Ulfric´s paranoia had taken on an all new and uncontrollable measure of its own, thus we had to pass three pairs of guards stationed on the windy and exposed stone structure at intervals, all of them asking for our names and demanding to see some ID and proof that we were indeed the ones we were pretending to be, even though most of them knew Ralof and me if not personally, then at least by sight and name. After all, we were no strangers to Windhelm, to its people and ruler, and certainly not to the Stormcloak mission. I grabbed Ra by the arm and stopped his grimly determined and utterly silence advance towards the city gates a few feet ahead of me. Pulling him off the middle of the road and into one of the many alcoves built for guards defending the city with bow and arrows, I pressed his back against the wall and forced him to meet my eyes. I wouldn’t have him ignore me any longer and wanted to finish our former conversation for real, before we did anything he would later regret.  
“Listen,” I said, “if there´s something you want to say to me, if there´s anything I should know before we enter town together, now´s the time.”  
He furrowed his brows. “What would I want to say?”  
“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged and started gesticulating wildly to underline my somewhat fragile point. “Whatever, man. If you are getting cold feet, if you thought about our promise and are not up to it, if you want to take it back, if you want to go back to the way things were before. Just say it. I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to. You know that, don’t you? So, if there´s anything on your mind, anything I should know before we go in there and I embarrass you, just spit it out!”  
“I… There´s nothing… Tabu, I told you…,” Ra began to stutter and looked around us furtively, though not furtive enough for me not to notice he was checking if either pair of guards was watching. The ones we had passed and were just out of earshot of had their backs turned to us, seemingly disinterested in anything that took place behind them, but the two soldiers standing duty to the left and right of the big, iron-banded portal only a few yards away looked on curiously. It was stormy and cold, and most travellers as well as inhabitants didn’t tend to linger on this fragile and unprotected structure floating high above of anything solid for longer than absolutely necessary, this entire construction seemingly built into the middle of the skies and being somehow unhinged and unstable.  
“Pff,” I snorted again. “I knew it!”  
“Knew what?”  
“Oh please, Ralof,” I snapped. “Don’t take me for a fool. That. All of that. The furtive glances, the constant fretting, your nervousness since we came in sight of the city, the things you said before. Don’t believe I can´t put one and one together. If you don’t want this, if you have second thoughts about what we agreed on just say it. You don’t have to go against what you believe right, against your instincts. If you want to take anything back, just tell me, Ra. I deserve that at least, don’t you think?”  
Ralof looked straight at me with these big and frozen blue eyes while soft flakes of icy snow started to fall all around us and obscuring, though not hiding, the two of us from the view of all around. The cold was really starting to get at me too and I began to tremble, my teeth chattering in my mouth and my thoughts freezing halfway through my brain, but I clenched my jaw and crossed my arms for Ralof not to notice, in order to keep my ground. The cold didn’t seem to bother him in the least, he did not even seem to notice the wind had taken on an all new and biting pitch since we had arrived at the stables and a heavy storm was very likely in the making. But then, this didn’t surprise. He was a Nord, after all, and he never seemed to get cold, never seemed to either notice nor react to changes in wind, weather and temperatures the way I did, the way my body was bound to. He just stood there and stared at me and I defiantly squinted back, not willing to give up this time, wanting to make him say it. After all, he was usually the one who bottled his feelings up and kept them safely tucked somewhere within, let them out only and exclusively when there was no way around it, no excuse to avoid it, which was usually only when I explicitly asked. Whereas I believed in openness and frankness and talked and sometimes even complained about everything that bothered me, as soon as it was starting to get at me. After all, in my mind, this was the only way to make a relationship work on the long run. We had to speak about our differences and had to try to talk about compromises, not just do whatever the other said and silently be uncomfortable the way I knew he often was, even though he tried his very best to hide it from me. It was something Ralof did quite often – and probably unconsciously – being so used to thinking he constantly disappointed any- and everyone around him and never wanting to hurt anyone he loved. But I loved him, more than I usually loved myself, and thus really wanted him to express himself, to disagree or object to me, as I could not possibly be the one always getting my way. It was just not right, not natural.  
“Ralof, say something,” I implored him after an incredibly long time of silence had hung between us and nothing else but the howling of the wind sounded in my ears. I took a step towards him on the narrow bridge and looked up into his open and angular face. “Please.”  
I saw his jaw work and his mind frantically pondering and weighing all his options but finally he grew very still and nodded.  
“Okay,” he said, his voice a whispering echo only of its usual full and deep resonance. “So, you think I am uncomfortable. You think I want to call all of it off, don’t you? Do you really want me to tell you what I think of this? What I want us to do?”  
I bit my lip and swallowed the disappointment and neigh overwhelming tiredness suddenly flooding my veins. I desperately tried not to feel let-down or betrayed but failed, even when I nodded and encouraged him to go on without revealing too much of what I was experiencing, preparing for his words, preparing myself for how it would feel to be denied, trying to find a vent to let the pain well through me. “Yes,” I pressed through clenched teeth. “Yes, I do.”  
“There you go,” he said and he even had the audacity to smile the briefest second, before he closed the space between us with a quick step towards me and we were back to standing in the middle of the street. Then, his arms were somehow on me and all around me in an instant and I was feeling his heart beat against my chest when he pressed me to him and then – utterly out of the blue, completely unprepared for it as I was – I felt his lips on mine, the stubble on his cheeks tickling my face, his breath slow and even on my skin and his tongue hot in my cold mouth. The kiss didn’t last long, but long enough for both the pair of sentries and some wayward travellers on their hurrying way to safety to see, before the worst of the storm would hit the area, and I gasped against him, taken aback. He looked at me with a lopsided grin after we had broken apart and blinked languidly at my apparent puzzlement and utter incomprehension. The other involuntary onlookers all quickly avoided their eyes and cast them down, the travellers and townsfolk continuing to watch us out of the corner of their widened eyes in incredible disbelief as they went along their way, and the guards just stood there, unable to leave neither post nor posture, but were as clearly pretty embarrassed and even put off by this sudden gesture and failing epically not to let it show.  
“Well, how was that?”, he asked with still a trace of an indelible smirk on his face.  
“Huh… unexpected for one,” I answered, still somewhat confused by what had just happened. “Why´d you do that?”  
“Why not?”, he said and shrugged. “You wanted my answer, there you have it. I don’t blame you for doubting me. I´d have doubted myself too, if I were you; you have every right to, especially after the thing with my family and stuff. But I wanted you to know that it´s over. That it wouldn’t ever be enough again, and this was the fastest way I could think of to make you understand. I want you to know that I never want to go back to hiding and pretending. We have made this decision together and I want you to know that I am gonna stand by it, by you, no matter how hard things will get. I am still nervous and insecure at times, but this is my own problem, I´ll have to learn to let go and to cope with it. But I´d never repudiate you. Ever. You didn’t believe me, which I can´t say I blame you for, so I had to show you. Do you believe me now?”  
“Oh Ra,” I whispered, stunned and shocked and happy and so lucky to be the one he loved, of all the people he could have gone for. How on earth did I deserve him? How on earth did I deserve any of it? “I´m so sorry, I–“  
“Hush,” he said and stared at the city gates blurred by increasingly thick flakes of snow. “Don’t you dare feel guilty now. I don’t want to hear any of it.”  
“But Ra, I–“  
“Shhh. We are here for each other, aren’t we? We have to take care of each other and bring out the best in one another, right? That’s what love is all about, isn’t it?”  
“Yes, it is, but…”  
“Tabu, this is what I want, okay? You don’t have to feel guilty and you don’t have to keep apologizing. I am not having second thoughts about our love nor about our decision. You are still all I want, all that I ever wanted. I still am all with you in all of it. I want to do this as much as you want to, believe me. It just feels so different and unusual, I´ll have to get used to this new awareness and this new sense of legitimacy that comes with it. I am not entirely there yet and I need your help, need you with me to pull this off, to see this through. I am just not strong enough alone. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t want this, okay?”  
I looked at him and my face melted by the sudden heat of love flooding my entire body. I nodded. “Okay,” I said and as he extended his hand I took hold of it and clenched his fingers tight in mine. “I am here, darling. Whenever you need me, whenever you need my strength, you can have it, any time.”  
“I always need your strength,” whispered Ralof, and then started for the huge portals that would lead us into the new heart of the independent province of Skyrim, the seat of the High King of the entire country, the city of Windhelm, by only the slightest nod of the guards standing sentry on the outside, assessing and controlling and (yes, unfortunately also) judging all people that tried to pass through.  
They did judge the two of us as well – quite thoroughly as I may remark at this point – but neither dared say anything as they recognized us as a high-ranking Thane and the third most important Stormcloak commander of the entire revolution trying to gain access into their city together. The left guard had his lips pressed into a very tight and thin line and refused to meet our eyes in general, staring straight ahead full into the head of the oncoming blizzard, but the second one scanned our identity papers and documents of validity and, after considerately narrowing his eyes at Ra´s gentle spoken command gave his customary curt nod and the gates behind his back creaked and groaned like an ancient old woman getting out of bed in the morning, before they swung open wide slowly, and we walked through the sloping arch of dark-grey stones and passed into the city of Windhelm proper side by side, hand in hand.  
“I´d say we now have all the attention we didn’t want,” I whispered into Ra´s ear as soon as the portal closed behind us with an echoing but not particularly reassuring thud and the guards standing left and right stared at us wide-eyed. “So much for trying not to rub it in their faces.”  
“I am not rubbing anything into anyone,” said Ra quietly but I still winced at the sound of his voice carrying far and wide, causing quite a few by-passers to stop, turn and stare. “And if they don‘t wanna see it, they can just look away.”  
“Don’t…. say that,” I groaned, and clung on to his hand as if desperate to be let go of. “Not like that and not in public anyways.” I shook my head. “So, here we are. What´s next?”  
“Well, as Galmar sent a rather urgent message, I´d better go –“  
“RALOF! HAITHABU!”, a booming voice both of us knew only too well yelled suddenly and Ralof had already taken off at a jog before I had had time to get my bearings and follow in his footsteps. He hugged the newcomer brotherly and an honest smile crept across his lovely face as he laughed with and at his best friend who had just appeared around the corner of the huge plaza and clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. As I caught up, they were already talking to each other and trading the latest information and gossip circulating among town and the community of Stormcloaks animatedly.  
“Zulu,” I said by way of greeting as the big bear of a man grinned at me cheerfully and bent down to squeeze my shoulder too and I tried desperately not to flinch under his touch. If Ralof was big, then Zulu was a true giant next to me. His eye level was about an entire head above mine, his hairline even further up and every time I saw him I was convinced he´d grown even broader and more muscular, as if he´d still not really grown his entire height, still not reached his full potential, but was by now surely amounting to five times my width and I am sure I could have fit an entire family of elves into his armour with room to spare, he was that huge! He slapped my shoulder – which felt surprisingly much like he wanted to knock a narrow pole straight into the earth with his bare hands alone – and I had to fight to stay on my feet and keep my knees unbent. I did not want to appear weak, though Zulu probably didn´t really know his own strength most of the times. “Nice to see you, muscles.”  
“I didn’t know you guys were in town,” continued Zulu, letting go of me and turning back to Ralof. “When did you come? How long are you staying?”  
“We´ve just arrived. And as to how long we´ll have to stay, we don’t know yet,” answered Ralof. “Galmar sent for me. I don’t know what he wants or what his missive is about yet, but he commanded me to come see him as soon as I could make it here. He knew I was finished early with my previous assignment and apparently already has a new one. I´ll find out as soon as I enter the palace, I guess. He sounded quite immediate.”  
“If that is the case, I´d go see him immediately if I were you. Ulfric´s in a real and proper mood today. Be glad you don’t bring any bad news, or you should already say goodbye to your head right here and now cause you´d be about to lose it for sure.”  
“You had some bad news?”, asked Ralof empathetically.  
Zulu nodded, all at once back to being sinister and stern, as befitted a high-ranking Stormcloak captain on a mission, and continued. “Pretty much. And neither Galmar nor I were able to come up with an immediate solution, so Ulfric got really pissed. I was desperate to get out of there as soon as possible. Still don’t know how to solve my little problem, but dealing with Ulfric these days sure gives me the creeps. It´s worse every time I stop by. Honestly, I don’t know how Galmar does it, how he can put up with all of this, with him… He was distrustful and suspicious even before all of this started, even from the beginning, but if you´re asking me, I´d say he´s slowly drifting away inside. And not to a good place, that´s for sure. I´m convinced if there isn’t something or someone able to please him very soon, heads will indeed roll tonight. Only make sure it´s none of yours, okay? Wouldn’t want to see my brother in arms to bite it tonight and I quite like the elf too, so my advice is to tread on eggshells whenever you’re in the palace. Wouldn´t want to have to bury you, guys!” He winked at me and I knew this joking banter was the way these guys expressed their affection towards each other – it was the only way they could, the only way they ever learned to – so I was unexpectedly touched that Zulu had over time gone to treat me like an equal and quipped with me just like he did with Ralof. It felt unexpectedly sweet and utterly welcome, and I winked back at him happily.  
“That bad?”, I asked, Ralof and me exchanging a worried look. He didn’t literally have any bad news, but he had come with quite a delay and a pretty self-imposed one on top of it. Ulfric was not gonna be pleased about that, if he was ever to find out. Especially not if he learned what the two of us had been doing instead. Ralof grimaced.  
“You have no idea, Haithabu,” answered Zulu, then cut himself off as he noticed Ra´s expression. “Wait… You guys don’t have any bad news, do you?”  
“Don’t think so,” I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Ra.  
“So far, we don’t have any news,” said Ra. “Just came here to receive new orders. Anything going on we should know about?”  
“He´s off his rocker,” growled Zulu darkly. “Lost it completely, if you ask me.”  
“Who? Ulfric?”, I asked. It was close to actual treason to talk like this of the king, and much more dangerous to do so out here, on the street, in the open, so Zulu only jerked his head and didn’t answer, but I was sure about his reply. After all, the Jarl had had it coming…  
“Just keep your heads down and don’t do anything harsh,” said Zulu. “That should do the trick. And when you´re finished here, get out asap, trust me, that´s the easiest way to avoid being part of any mayhem.”  
“Fine, but if it´s truly as turbulent as you´re saying, then what are you doing here, Zulu,” asked Ralof and looked up at his friend with affection and care. “Trouble´s still your second name, I see? Shouldn’t you oversee the tracking down of any stray imperial agents and assassins that keep harassing Solitude? You finished with that already?”  
“Nah,” Zulu said with an impatient wave of his hand. “I wish. Bastards are more cunning than that. Unfortunately. Keep slipping away just before I can get close enough to off them. Just last week we found out the East Empire Trading Company was hiding three potential terrorists who were probably planning a hostile take-over attack on the Garrison. I collected my men and tried to track them down, but something or someone, rather, must have tipped them off. They were long gone by the time we broke their gates down and searched the grotto. Only fat and frightened merchants left who kept stuttering they didn’t know a thing. Happened often enough now for a man to become suspicious. There must be a mole somewhere.”  
“A mole?”, echoed Ra, furrowing his brows in disbelieve. I could easily understand his surprise. After all, the Stormcloaks I knew – with only very, very few exceptions –were all faithfully loyal and true to the Stormcloak cause to their very hearts, all of them convinced to their core that they were doing the work of their god Talos and that their success was a sign of approval and benevolence, a justification by the mighty divine for their holy cause. It seemed unimaginable to think one of them would turn his cloak and betray his followers, or help any Imperials at all, against which all Nords in general seemed to feel quite hateful even in the best of times. They were each other´s Nemesis and opposing each other in ever more violent conflicts almost since the beginning of time herself. It was completely unthinkable – at least for a Nord – that one of their own could willingly decide to collaborate with THE arch-enemy. “But I know your unit,” continued Ralof. “They are to a man all loyal and true at heart. I can´t imagine anyone going behind the King´s back like this. I can´t think of any of them betraying you.”  
“Neither can I,” sighed Zulu and I could see the strain and worry this caused him in the lines around his mouth and the tension in his eyes. After all, much like Ralof, Zulu lived for his unit, lived for his life as a captain and for every single man or woman he commanded over, and also pretty much like Ralof, was really very good at what he was doing. He was more arrogant, extroverted and more often than not quite self-opinionated in my mind, and much harder to get warm to, but he was doing a great job and was both loved and respected by the men and women he was supervising over, who – to a man – all would die for him and the rebellion readily at any time, without asking twice. It was weighting him down, this knowledge of a turncoat playing a rigged game somewhere, playing both ends against the middle, I could see that, and the certitude this person had to be found out and dealt with accordingly was eating away at his mind. He was a good man, a capable commander and had always been true to Ralof and to his friendship with the shy guy from Riverwood, had always backed and defended him, as well as been nice and brotherly unbothered by and with me, even after he had learned we were dating, so even though he could sometimes be a bit supercilious or dismissive to anyone not sharing his rigid beliefs and convictions, I felt like he deserved to be pitied. “I know all of them personally and rather intimately. It is not that large a group after all. We went through hell and any and every mission together and I would have thought I could trust each and every one of them with my life, with the life of my king and country. But it seems now, that I have been wrong.”  
“I am sorry to hear about that,” I said empathetically. “If there´s anything we can do, you´ll let us know, right?”  
“Sure thing,” answered Zulu. “As of yet I am not entirely sure yet what the best strategy is. Though in truth, I know very well what I´ll eventually have to do, if nothing else works.”  
“And what is that?”, asked Ra.  
“The only thing there is to do,” conceded Zulu through clenched teeth and his grim expression and the sadness in his eyes belied the force with which he uttered his next words. “Wait till the spy makes a mistake and then kill him. Or her. It´s the only way I can end this. The only honourable way out, to ensure the peace and safety of the rest of my team. Even though it will probably be the hardest kill I´ll ever have to make. But the way I see it, there is no escaping this, no matter how hard it will be.”  
“What if it isn’t actually one of your men?”, I asked.  
“Who else would it be?”  
“Well, some of the locals, for instance,” I said, trying to remember our informants in Solitude and their backgrounds. Surely, there were some of them who could still cling to the hope of helping the Empire return and assume their hold over Skyrim, working for healthily promised bonuses and a promotion into the favour of the Emperor himself. There were less ambitious outlooks men would kill for, especially if the struggle takes place between Nords and Imperials. It was not only a possibility, in my mind I was sure it could only be one of the snitches the Stormcloaks got their information from. “You are for sure using some native informants or other reliable sources in or around Solitude to glean what scraps of intelligence you can get, before you go after the imperial agents, don’t you?”  
“Sure,” conceded Zulu and nodded emphatically. “But none of these know enough to be dangerous to our mission. I usually see to that myself. After all, Ulfric´s paranoia doesn’t stop at the gates of this beautiful city, rest assured of that. I never tell them more than absolutely necessary and usually, they only seem to be interested in keeping out of harm´s way. They are mostly peasants or simple town-folks, after all.”  
“Still, one of them could be the one you´re looking for, right? Someone who knew enough to let slip some seemingly unimportant facts to the right ears at the right time and, snap, just like that, mischief is accomplished. It is possible, isn’t it?”, I asked and Zulu regarded me with new hope in his fiery eyes. “Theoretically speaking?”  
“I sure trust any of these people less than the brothers and sisters I have fought with, that I have shed my blood for, yes,” agreed Zulu immediately. “So yeah, I guess you´re right, Haithabu. But what are you getting at? There´s no way for us to find out for sure, is there? After all, neither of them is very likely to blab to a Stormcloak officer, no matter in which disguise. We may have conquered and subjected the entire region, but imperial resistance still is strong in this part of the world. Our hold on the land and people will be further weakened if we execute or punish the wrong guy. There´s absolutely no margin for any mistakes, here.”  
“Good thing you know just the right guy to take care of things like that, isn’t it?”, I said and Ralof looked at me with a mixed expression I couldn’t entirely get the better of just now.  
“Now that we are talking about it, Haithabu,” continued Zulu thoughtfully. “You are good at these kinds of things, aren’t you? The harder the better, from what I´ve heard. You up for a challenge?”  
“Define `these kinds of things´,” I said with a mischievous grin suddenly playing around the corners of my mouth. “Though Ralof here will probably agree that I am good in most anything when it comes to hard things, right darling?”  
Ra nudged my shoulder, embarrassed, but Zulu just grinned at us very ambiguously. “Keep it cool, guys,” said Zulu. “That´s not what I meant. But you do have certain skills when it comes to sneaking and spying, am I right? You could find out many things about a given person without him or her even noticing, right? I mean, I´ve basically seen you do it, man, and if I hadn’t known what you wanted to do, if I hadn’t known you were gonna rob me clean, I would never even have felt your hand in my pocket at all. You´re really freaking awesome with all the sneaky stuff. Don’t worry, Ralof,” added Zulu without a pause in the suave and equivocal way so typical for him and winked at his friend wolfishly. “The gems in my satchel really were the only jewels he touched. We were just training pickpocketing, you know.”  
“Zulu,” I hissed, thrown off track momentarily as I felt an expression of exasperation at his words cross my features and, against all better judgement, I felt my cheeks flush red, despite the cutting cold of the air all around. Now it was my turn to be quite thoroughly embarrassed.  
Ralof, though, seemed neither indignant nor annoyed but cuffed his friend amusedly and laughed. “Well, that´s a relief,” he drawled ironically. “Good for him. Always glad to hear he´s true to me, but then, who´d want to stay with you?” Both men erupted in booming laughter and I stood by next to them pretty much without a clue as to what exactly had been so funny right now. In my mind, neither fidelity nor faithfulness were laughing matters at all. I couldn’t understand what these two were so amused about, and shook my head minutely. Some things, I guessed, I would just never get. These Nords could really be a truly strange sort of people, sometimes. Ralof was quick to continue though, after both men had had their fun. “But, back on the subject, Zulu, what are you trying to get at? What do you need a thief for?”  
“I don’t need a thief,” amended Zulu, all of a sudden back to business as well, not a trace of amusement lingering either on his face nor in his eyes. “I need an assassin. A spy of my own; someone capable of doing what I can´t and get to the bottom of what is happening here, of the conspiracy against the free province of Skyrim. We have to find out about this and remove the traitor. And we have to be quick about it.”  
“Wait a sec, you said we?” I jumped back on to his train of thoughts. “You want me to find out who is sabotaging you? You want me to kill him? How´s that honourable?”  
“I can – and I will – kill him myself, thank you very much,” grumbled Zulu darkly. “But what I cannot do is find out about who is betraying me without giving away everything to everyone right away. Because, other than you, I am kind of hard to miss in any group of people and very hard to blend in with society in general. Furthermore, I am very bad at eavesdropping without anyone noticing and stealthily following a target inconspicuously, and much more so on this mission because it feels like entire Solitude knows me by sight, if not already by name. No exceptions, even the kids started calling me uncle giant last week. But they don’t know you, most of them won´t even see you consciously at all. And if you try hard enough, they won´t notice you either, even as you watch them, stalk them. I only need you to bring the traitor to me. The rest I will see through by myself. So yes, yes I guess you could make a difference and succeed where – up till now – I failed.”  
“He´s right, Tabu,” said Ra, nodding thoughtfully as if to himself. “You could pull this off. After all, I´ve never seen anyone stealthier. If there´s anyone prone to succeed without being found out, anyone who can do this in secret, it´s gotta be you. After all, you really are quite good at this kind of stuff.”  
I turned towards him as I spoke and raised a single eyebrow. “Is that what you do now?”, I asked. “Selling off your boyfriend to the highest bidder?”  
“More like… to any bidder, really, cause I haven’t even made an offer yet,” said Zulu in dry amusement.  
“Well, now that you mentioned it,” Ralof turned to Zulu and raised an eyebrow, as if he wanted the bigger man to propose an offer. “What do I get for him?”  
“He seems truly desperate to get you off his hands. Ralof, you do realize that Solitude is close to the farthest you could get from Windhelm without actually leaving Skyrim, right?”  
Ra shrugged his shoulders and looked at his friend intently, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling happily. “Well, as long as you don’t break him…”  
“Wow,” I said, sarcasm dripping all around my words while I truly rejoiced at seeing Ralof smirking despite himself. “That´s a new low for our love. Tcha,” I continued and tried for as wistful a tone of voice as possible. “Passion dies so fast these days. There´s hardly any left here to hold onto.”  
“Yet there´s always enough for me to hold onto you,” said Ralof, looking at me seriously once more, and Zulu rolled his eyes and tsked, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a possibly disparaging “lovebirds”, while Ra leaned forward and whispered a brief “I love you” into my ear.  
“You guys are sappy, you know that?”, stated Zulu.  
“Hey,” I said, shrugging defensively. “We´re in love, remember? We´re supposed to be sappy!”  
“Get a room, you two,” chided the giant of a man amiably and shook his head in our general direction.  
“Would it help if I pointed out that´s exactly what we´re trying to do here, but you are quite successfully keeping us from moving on?”, asked Ra dryly. “Both quite literally and figuratively speaking.”  
I snorted as Zulu raised his eyebrows at this play of words. Then he made a series of very deep and very oscillating grunts that may have passed for laughter somewhere in Nordic society and made a pair of doves startle into frantic flight in the dark and leaning eaves overhead. For me, it felt like the entire floor shook under his bursts of humour beneath my booted feet and I shot a quick glance at Ralof who seemed quite pleased with himself. “Well spoken, brother,” boomed Zulu mirthfully, as soon as he was back to speaking volume and slapped his friend´s back so that I could almost feel Ra´s teeth chatter in his jaw. “So, is it settled then? Will you come?”, continued Zulu, facing me again much more serious. “The King would be very pleased about your assistance in this, Haithabu.”  
“Oh please spare me that,” I answered dismissively and waved his objection away with a curt gesture of my hand. As disappointment settled over Zulu´s eyes and his shoulders slumped as another possibility of solving his situation seemed to dissolve before his very eyes I shook my head quickly to make him understand I was not finished yet. I wouldn’t let that happen, I just couldn’t. Not if I could help a friend out by doing what I did best and what I liked doing so much that I even earned my living with it. Zulu was a nice guy and he deserved to be happy. “Of course I will help you, Zulu. But I will do it for you, and you alone, not for any king nor regime. The benevolent Ulfric doesn’t care about any of us, not really, he just cares about power and amassing it for himself. So yes, I will assist you and I will try to help you eradicate resistance in Solitude, but the King won´t have anything to do with it. I do it because I like you, and I want to help you, nothing else. I am not from Skyrim and though I helped win this revolution I owe Ulfric nothing and he has no claim over me. As long as that´s clear, we´ll be good, muscles.”  
“Oh, that´s so sweet of you. Touches me right where my bathing suit goes,” leered Zulu and straightened up. “All right, pointy ears,” he continued, more serious now but still far away from being entirely earnest, the joking banter making him much more likeable and friendly than his ofttimes arrogant demeanour to outsiders. But I knew him, and I knew how to speak with him to truly get through to him. Also, he was one of the very few people I ever encountered who was actually allowed to call me names like that, who could do so without incurring wrath, or worse, because I knew he didn’t mean it. I knew he didn’t mean it and that it was his way of expressing his affection, his liking for me, the partner of his closest brother in arms, and I was immensely glad he proved to be such a good friend to both of us. It was the same reason why I called him names as well at times. “Grab your bow and arrow´s and we´ll be on our way. Can´t wait to show these suckers in Solitude I have a sneaky elf up my sleeve now.”  
“Woh, woh, woh,” cut in Ralof when Zulu tried to steer me away and towards the city gates we had just passed, not twenty minutes ago, without any further rigmarole. “Wait a minute. You can´t just take him like that. That´s rude. We had… plans, you know.”  
“Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what plans you guys have,” said Zulu, good-humoured and due to the prospect to soon getting the upper hand in his struggles with the indigenous population in westernmost Skyrim suddenly much more cheerful and elated and back to his confident, merry self. “But for now, repress the urge, Ralof. I know it´s hard, but you can do it, trust me. This is important. I need your lover more than you need him right now, believe me there. I´ll send him back once I´m done with him.” He slapped his friend´s shoulder once more and turned to go. “In one piece, I promise.”  
“Do I get any say in this?”, I asked, though I already knew the answer even before I opened my mouth.  
“Nope, pointy ears,” said Zulu firmly. “Absolutely not. But if it helps, just think of him when you shoot your arrows, that should do the trick, don’t you think? Now, I´ve run all out of bawdy references and ambiguous jokes, so come along, let´s go.” He winked and apparently had a whale of a good time when he caught sight of both of our sheepish expressions.  
“What, now? As in immediately now?”, I asked, brows arched high over my forehead. “Do I look like I am fit to brave the wilderness like this? Zulu, with all due respect, I know this is important for you, but I´ll never make it to Solitude like this. I´ll need at least some sleep before I start running off through Skyrim again.”  
“Okay, fine. Go have some sleep. There are still a few things I need to take care of before I leave anyways, so what do you say? We leave town in four hours? We can start right after the storm has blown through and ride through the nights, that way we´ll be in Solitude in less than a week. You up for it?”  
“Actually,” I said and held him back by the elbow just as he turned to go. “We only just arrived and my horse is wasted. She´ll need at least a night to regain her full strength for such a journey across all of Skyrim. Also, Serana´s waiting for me in Riften, I need to send her at least a short letter to account for my absence. After all, the world is desperately in need of my services in more than one place. And, last but certainly not least, and most important of it all: I don’t wanna leave this handsome fellow behind just yet,” I said and slipped a hand around Ra´s hips, pulling him close to me. His body was tense and reluctant at first, him casting a nervous glance about (after all, though Zulu knew we were a couple, had known for almost an entire year, we had never exactly been that obvious even in front of him and Maryse, and had always tried not to get too familiar with each other when anyone could watch), but his muscles soon relaxed as hip-bone met hip-bone and nobody around us did anything aggressive or harsh other than look and then quickly avert his eyes. Zulu did neither of these, simply furrowed his brows as he counted off the hours inside his head. “If you do believe in our love, muscles, then please have some mercy on poor enamoured fellows such as us and allow us another night together. That´s the least you can do, don’t you think? I´ll readily accompany you to Solitude tomorrow.”  
“Understandable,” scoffed Zulu. “Though of course there´s nobody more attractive and handsome than I am and you’ll miss an entire night in my stunning company, but I don’t expect either you guys to understand this. Well, then,” he continued seamlessly and clapped his hands. “I´ll leave you to it, then. Have fun tonight – well, in case you make it out of the King´s grace alive, Ralof – the two of us will have a date at dawn tomorrow, Haithabu. Don’t be late, no matter how long that one keeps you up tonight, get me? That fine with either of you?”  
The two of us nodded and Zulu soon took his leave, shuffling away to the smithy and its tenant to have his blade sharpened for the dangerous journey to the mountains. Ralof and I continued towards the palace and had soon reached the outskirts of the encompassing complex of buildings. I stopped at the stairs leading up towards the Stormcloak´s training compound and the entrance to Ulfric´s abodes behind.  
“I guess I´ll have to go see Galmar and the Jarl at long last,” sighed Ralof as he looked up and ahead. “Don’t want to strain their patience thin, though I fear they will already be pretty miffed I didn’t rush my way along. Have to think of a plausible excuse on my way in. After all, I have kept them waiting far too long by now. Will you take care of arranging somewhere to sleep?”  
“Will do. I was thinking, Candlehearth Hall might be nice. That fine with you?”, I said and followed his glance upwards and to the tops of the stony spires extending far into the grey sky beyond. The guards in front of the palace entrance straightened immediately, as soon as they spotted one of their high-ranking captains in official livery and stood to attention. Ra nodded to both of them distractedly and handed me his packed saddlebag.  
“Sure. Whatever you like. Though we could still always stay with the others at the palace. It´s cheaper that way and everyone will be together, sitting around the fireplace, sharing stories, eat and drink… you know.”  
I shook my head decisively. “No. I don’t like it there. Too much stone, too massive, too cramped, too dark. Too little air for an elf. Every time I even enter Ulfric´s abodes, I fear I´ll never make it out alive. It makes me feel like I lack oxygen and can´t breathe properly. It´s bad enough out here, it only gets worse the deeper inside I venture. Besides, I know the innkeep of Candlehearth Hall and she owes me a favour, so I think I can get us a good price. And it´s only for a night anyways, you can go back to your pals and sleep in the palace dungeons when I´m on my way with Zulu tomorrow.”  
“It´s not a dungeon it´s a garrison, but okay, whatever makes you happy.” He nodded at my words distractedly and I could see that he was already occupied with whatever his bosses would bequeath him with and worrying about a plausible way of accounting for his immense delay, so I decided to let him off the hook quickly.  
“Have fun, darling,” I said and pecked a kiss onto his cheek. “Try not to aggravate your beloved King more than necessary. He really must be in a foul mood today if even Zulu was affected. Your friend is usually not that perceptive of human emotions, in my experience. Hey, how about dinner at the dark-elf-quarter later? The New-Gnisis Club down at the intersection is said to serve excellent pie this time of the year. And I dare say you´ll need a fair portion of it if you survive your interview with the two of them. What do you think?”  
“Pie?” That, much as really anything having to do with sweet food, got his attention fixed back on me once more and he furrowed his brows in amusement, while I could clearly see he was in his mind already indulging in piles of the delicious dish. Well, if that was what would get him through the audience… “How on earth did you hear that? You haven’t been in town for almost a year. You don’t even like it here!”  
“Well, I do have very big ears, you know,” I smiled and winked meaningfully. “You´re bound to pick up one thing or the other with these things…”  
“Yeah, right, second that,” he answered but quickly got serious again. “All right, let´s check this out then. I´m thrilled. About the only thing that can motivate me right now to go through with this at all. I´ll meet you at the harbour gate at dusk. If I don’t show by the time the sun is down, collect my corpse at the palace door. See you later.” He hesitated and smirked. “One way or the other.”  
“Your morbid humour is gonna be the death of me one day. I´ll think of you, darling. Laters,” I said and watched him hurry off towards the biggest and stoniest structure in town – and in my mind also the most confining and ugliest near and far on top of that– the royal palace of Jarl Ulfric, High King of Skyrim. I mused about what would await him there and how probable it was that Ra got assigned a mission in or around Solitude so that he´d be able to accompany Zulu and me tomorrow and the two of us could spend some more time together.  
As soon as Ra was out of sight, I turned my back on the whole site and started off towards Candlehearth Hall in the opposite direction. I was used to only seeing my lover once or twice a month, and even then only for a few days in a row, mostly geographically confined in some town or village both had made a detour to to visit, but these last few weeks – and much more so since I had at long last gotten him to finally come out to the world – I longed to be with him even more than usual. I loved our relationship and I loved we were making it work, despite the odds – indeed, it was most surprising and all the more astonishing that we had both been able to sustain this somewhat fragile dalliance for close to two years now. Much as I liked to believe otherwise, I wouldn’t ever have thought this could work out for quite that long and had felt sure our partnership would break to pieces after only a few straining weeks. But, I had been so wrong, I could see that now. And it was all the more amazing that I felt stronger for this incredible guy today than I ever did before. I loved all of that, and I was immensely glad we had given it a try, had done our best to make this work and succeeded perfectly. But, despite all of that, something inside of me felt off nonetheless. There was a nagging, insistent urge down there in the pit of my stomach, in the hollow of my heart, that wouldn’t keep quiet any longer, that refused to be ignored and grew bigger and bigger. Something that wanted to move on, to take the next step, whatever that was. It was ready for something new, something more permanent and steady, something solid and committed. I couldn’t yet form this strange new longing into words – or even thoughts, as it was – but I sure as hell felt it gnawing its way through my inside, leaving confusion and chaos and something even more foreign inside. After all, I had lived almost three hundred years now, was sure I had positively experienced most emotions my people were able to feel at all at some point or another in my life, and had yet never ever had these kinds of feelings before. Wondering if something was at long last indeed really and thoroughly wrong inside of me, I succumbed to gloomy thoughts and a nagging certainty that I had to do something about these sensations quickly, and better sooner rather than later, lest they affect those that I love around me and make both Ralof and me deeply unhappy inside. Because, sensitive and emotional as my partner was, I would only be able to keep all of this to myself for so long, it would only be so long before my precious Ra caught a whiff of what I tried to hide from him and under no circumstances could he think it was something to do with him or that I was becoming estranged to our alliance or some such. Of course it was exactly that, though in a much different way than he would assume. And I just couldn’t bear to hurt him.  
Just when I left the leeside of the shrouding ancient buildings that all looked like they bent their backs under the ever blazing wind, being hunch-backed and almost broken by the gales and the tempests´ dire moods, I noticed a shadow mirroring my moves and first slowed inconspicuously, then stopped at one of the big fireplaces all around the imposing inn in the middle of the biggest plaza in town, to pretend to warm my hands and feet, while I was in truth scanning my surroundings warily, looking for the deceitfully cunning assassin that tried to creep up on me like that. Candlehearth Hall was built on sort of a pedestal, the streets of Windhelm being not at all uniform or in good shape, the people just treading where they wanted to and where custom or rote had trodden its path, so, apart from the royal quarter and the routes directly around the palace, there was nothing in town close to actual streets. Lots of centuries of masonry and crumbling buildings had caused stones being discarded in corners and around the main walkways, used again for new buildings, discarded again and finally forgotten in a heap off the main paths or lying around just in the middle of anywhere, the people in town being either too lazy or too preoccupied with more important, more life-sustaining matters than to bother about the looks of their dwelling, so Windhelm in general had the somewhat desolate and bleak look of an abandoned quarry stone pit. And while it didn’t seem to trouble any of the inhabitants or regulars who were often passing through here, it did bother me and I noticed the abysmal state the entire area was in every time I passed through, and every time I felt a little bit worse when my eyes took in the general desolation this entire location exuded. Windhelm was divided into four very different quarters, varying both in fortune, population and people, as well as in the lookout on life in general. The Stone Quarter encompassed the main market, all important economic businesses and thriving enterprises in town, and its merchants, vendors and house-owners kept it comparatively clean. The Dark Elf Quarter occupied the other end of town and sat at the very bottom of the cliff, this distribution of dwellings indirectly mirroring the unofficial ranking between races, all Nords in generally considering themselves way above any elf, thus confining all kinds of Bosmer, Altmer and mostly Dunmer to the very bottom of their hierarchically built city, however dedicated or nordic his or her lifestyle or customs were and how assimilated he or she tried to live. The Nords of Windhelm complained about the percentage of elves – and especially dark elves on the run from the war and the volcano in their home province Morrowind – in their traditional town and had packed them all together into one quarter trying to ban them from civil life and most cultural activities and events. They regularly complained the elves wouldn´t integrate themselves, didn’t want to participate in nordic lives or traditions, but the way I saw it, the way anyone belonging to a racial minority in Windhelm had to see it, the Nords themselves were not the most tolerant of sorts, no matter what they may say and how they may try to stand for something totally different on the outside. Point of fact was, they did not actually truly want any strangers in their city – at least none who had pointy ears and would want to stay permanently – and were quick to make them feel it. They may complain about the dark elves and their reluctance to properly interact with the native population, but in fact, most Nords actually didn’t want them to integrate themselves. This was the reason why they packed them away out of sight and – hopefully – out of mind at the same time and tried not to think about the degeneration and corruption of an entire people who were ofttimes forced into delinquencies and crime for lack of any other perspective, for lack of tolerance and help of the men and woman who had promised them food and shelter, assistance and support. So, the both emotional and physical decay of the Grey Quarter, as it was often called in colloquial speech, was hardly surprising, something people just have had to do in order to survive and by now indeed had gotten used to, so much so, that they weren’t able to stop any more. It was not what upset me most, whenever I entered these close confining, uncomfortable walls, but it sure contributed to the uneasiness in my veins.  
Thus, no stranger to criminals and slinky thieves in a city such as Windhelm, I shouldn’t have been surprised that one or the other of a sorry lot had decided to stick to my heels and very probably relieve me of the spare coin and few other valuables I carried on my person, and – should I prove recalcitrant – just slit my throat and somehow depose of me in the cold, dark and forgetting waters of the icy bay all around. It wouldn’t be the first time a traveller disappeared in these climes, and these days even more than usual you really had to keep constantly on guard, no matter if you actually were in a city protected against dragons, giants, vampires and the likes or out in the open with only the wind and weather to keep you company. I didn’t want to end like one of the nameless strangers in such a way, finding this end rather unceremoniously, so I decided to find out about my unwanted follower right now, before it was too late.  
The only notable inn in town had truly huge proportions – there were always a lot of travellers in Windhelm, be it winter or summer, storm or blazing sunshine, the harbour and deep and therefore never completely frozen bay being the sole vital lifeline of its people and citizens in all important respects – sat in between three of the city´s quarters, right at the junction where three different ethnics met and often clashed violently, both verbally and unfortunately equally physically. The Grey Quarter, Stone Quarter and the Royal Quarter with its fancy houses and extensive fortifications each had direct access to this plaza and the inn standing in the middle of it therefore had an especially dilapidated look to itself, more so even than all the other houses framing the grey and snowy square all around. It looked almost ramshackle to the untrained eye, its walls brick-built from a whole amalgamation of differently coloured, textured and shaped stones, giving the whole contorted and hunched structure the look of a badly put-together patchwork quilt. It could also invoke the impression it would never brave even the smallest storms hitting Windhelm frequently and thus being prone to be blown away by the first aggressive gale sweeping its way, but I knew from experience that this book shouldn’t be judged by its cover and that, once passed over the threshold, a traveller could hardly ask for any more comfort. Especially in otherwise bleak, uninhabitable and dank surroundings like here. The chambers were small, but cosy and warm, there was always room to sleep for everyone who came asking – and who of course paid their share – even when there was a fare or an annual market and the entire town was packed full to the brim. The innkeeper was an elderly lady with a quick wit and a smart humour and I liked her a lot, both professionally and personally, and the whole staff had only ever been friendly in my presence as well. In short, I had as of yet never made negative experiences when staying there, and it was about the only thing in Windhelm that I truly liked, and why I ventured back into this icy cold dwelling at all, once in a while. Being built unevenly on some sort of prehistoric stone block, the only building occupying the square and therefore both dominating and surveying it, there was hardly any space to hide or pass unnoticed when stepping out of the accessing alleyways and, standing around the glowing bed of smoking coals now that were erected here and there by well-meaning guards against the cold of winter, feeling the warmth of the smouldering embers prickling the tips of my nearly numb fingertips, I scanned the shadows unobtrusively and quickly made out my unwanted follower, though she really tried very hard not to be noticed. There was hardly any traffic right now and except for a few adolescents loitering around at the far end of the square the only persons I could see were the guards at the city gates, mirrored by those guarding the palace doors in the distance.  
“Silda,” I called and quickly turned from a nonchalant posture of oblivious relaxing towards where she was cowering behind the only brush in probably all of Windhelm, even if it was leaf-less, frozen and very probably also quite dead. “You can come out now. Nothing to be gained by sneaking up on an elf, is there?”  
There was a bit of hesitation, awkwardness and reluctance, but finally she got up and slowly strolled over towards me, hands deep in her pockets, gossamer rags blowing in the wind. The sight of her dressed in nothing but the thinnest, lightest fabric and mere leather scraps bound together at the ankles for shoes gave me goose bumps and I quickly rummaged around in my pockets. “Here, take these,” I said and tossed her two gold coins. She caught them out of the air with quick and nimble fingers and came to stand opposite me in front of the bowl of warmth, stretching her bare fingers towards the remaining heat, though I knew she was much hardier and more accustomed to the bleak and harsh life and the cold on the streets of town than she ever let on, trying to arouse compassion and make people pity her. I didn’t blame her for that, though. On the contrary. She did have a hard life, harder than anything I could imagine and every time I saw her or other beggars like her, I was immensely glad I hadn’t been born into anything like this. After all, my family may have had their faults, they may have denounced me and cast me out and I may never see any of them ever again, but at least I had had a better start in life than the likes of Silda and for that alone, I was thankful enough not to hate them all that overwhelmingly any more. Seeing how Silda lived, seeing how she strained not to freeze and what she had to do just in order to stay alive, it made me appreciate all the little things I had, I took for granted, even, that she had never had the fortune to experience, would probably never come by. I couldn’t even begrudge her to steal what little she could without being found out, in order to make ends meet. People around here weren’t the wealthiest sorts, but most were far better off than Silda herself. They had a roof over their heads, they were protected against the winds and the freezing temperatures day and night out here, and they had a home. A family, something to come home to. Silda had nothing. No one. And for that alone she deserved the odd gesture of solidarity once in a while, even if it were only little ones, but I told myself that the small stuff help helped too, that even a gold coin or two once in a while would make a difference.  
She smiled at me now as she first bit the metal – to assure its authenticity – then quickly pocketed it with nimble fingers so that even I couldn’t have said where exactly into her spare attire the coins disappeared to. She truly was a master of her art and I had myself learned quite a few tricks from her ample inventory in my time, creating not an actual bond or anything like that between us, but more like a reciprocated feeling of respect that was based on mutual suspicion and even a little bit of distrustful wariness on both our parts. After all, we had initially met because she had tried to rob me dry and I had caught her just in the nick of time, before she could disappear with all my precious belongings in her pockets and left me none the wiser. These days were long past now – at least that´s what I made myself believe – and whenever I came to Windhelm, I made sure to check out her usual haunts to supply her with a token for at least a few days´ comfort whenever I found her. I knew it was next to nothing on the greater scale, but it did seem to make her happy, so I had kept up the custom and even made it a tradition.  
“The Divines smile on a charitable soul,” she rasped in her characteristic, hollow and hoarse drawl. “It has been too long, Haithabu.”  
I inclined my head and smiled at her warmly. “It is nice to see you too, Silda. I am glad to find you well. Though I´d don’t appreciate being stalked and followed, you know. I´ve got a nervous hand and an ever-alert mind. Nothing good could come of this and a quiver full of sharp arrows.”  
“Had to make sure it´s you before I let my guard down, didn’t I? After all, I´ve got a reputation to defend,” cawed Silda and shimmied a little bit closer. I moved my frozen limbs, willing the warmth to spread through my uncomfortable body and cancel out the feelings of oppression and disquietude that made my stomach knot.  
“So, what´s the word on the streets, Silda? Anything interesting going on? Picked up any rumours lately, any stories worth listening to?” She smiled her crooked smile – only half the teeth left in her raw-red gums – and leaned forward confidentially. It was a game we often played, she and I; she would tip me off with anything supernatural or otherwise untoward going on around here, anything that needed to be taken care off for the well-being of the majority of most oblivious people in town – after all, as a beggar and slinky thief on top of it there was hardly anyone better informed about the going-ons of a city like Windhelm than those who were able to listen to just about everyone and anyone without being noticed eavesdropping, without being cared about – and on top of being conniving and remarkably inconspicuous when she wanted to, Silda was smart and sharp of mind, even if she didn’t look it on the outside, which easily did the rest for her. So, she´d drop a hint or two, once in a while, providing a man looking for fortune and wealth with an occupation or two and whenever my commission allowed me to make some extra coins or sweep anything of value, I´d gladly split my loot with her. Thus, we had developed a sort of liking and a wary need for each other, even though neither of us could fully trust his counterpart yet, and probably never would.  
“Well, there´s been a bunch of obscure and pretty violent murders, if that´s the thing you´re looking for,” whispered Silda in her raw ruckus.  
“Not personally, no, but pray keep going. I´m all ears,” I said and allowed her to advance another step around the rim of the bowl. She was willow-thin but at the same time tall like every other Nord I had ever seen, making for a truly comical appearance of a long beanpole with the typically sparkling eyes of her interesting race, that glinted and sparkled like Ra´s but were somehow still completely different, and despite what you´d expect, she didn’t look particularly desolate or haunted, like most others of her profession. Her eyes were much darker than Ralof´s, almost a shade somewhere between blue and lilac, but they were also sharp and keen and wise to every muscle moving in the person she seized up with them, as well as seeing everything of import or noteworthiness that was going on in or around her city. She was the best informant I could think of, if a somewhat unconventional one, and an unusually reliable source of intelligence in many forms on top of that, if indeed you had the right means of persuasion. Her hair was completely white and reached all the way to her shoulder, tangled in knots and strands that probably hadn’t been kempt properly in much too long, but her eyes were unveiled and always alert, returning my stare intently.  
“Well,” she continued. “Hearsay has it, somebody has started butchering young and handsome women around town for kicks. There´s been three victims thus far, the latest just found the other morning in the old graveyard up adjacent to the Royal Quarter and the talk of the town has it it´s the doing of a serial killer. Quite bloody affair, too, if you ask me. The gals all seemed to have been violently beaten and abused before killed and the last one was thoroughly maimed on top of that. People started to call him… the Butcher.”  
“Him?”  
“Well, it´s bound to be a him, isn’t it? Regarding the victims´ gender and everything. Also, witnesses have been in touch and they swear they´ve seen a muscular, vaguely manly shape leave the cemetery right before the deed was discovered.”  
“Any actual idea as to the identity of this man?”, I asked, making mental notes, all the while not trying to think of exactly the way the dead bodies must have looked like to its finders. It was a truly terrible affair. No wonder the entire town seemed somewhat subdued, its population even more wary and dismal than usual and everybody jumping at every other shadow, constantly on edge. I had secretly felt that something was off, something serious was going on, and apparently, my instincts had – once again – been proved perfectly right.  
“None, so far,” replied Silda and shimmied ever closer, voice susurrating confidentially. “But he was clothed all in black, had a big cape around his shoulders and a dark hood drawn across his face. Besides, the murders all happened at night, or at least after dark, so nobody could have recognized anything anyways. Oh, and he didn’t leave any marks in the snow, like footprints or so, at least no one to be found by the guards who investigated the crime scenes.”  
“Great,” I sighed, repressing a shudder. “So, it could basically be anyone, from anywhere. By now probably as conspicuous in this bloody town as a melted snowflake in a pile of silt. Awesome. Can you tell me more about the witnesses? Who were they and how exactly did they witness anything? Do the authorities know about them?”  
Silda cocked her head like a bird of prey and regarded me with a thoughtful expression. “Now, now, Haithabu,” she said and her teeth flashed as she spoke. “I wouldn’t be a professional if I gave away my sources, would I? They are not for the broader public and they don’t like to be questioned. They are my reliant suppliers, and up to a certain point, I´d vouch for them personally. So, you´ll just have to trust me in this, Mister elf. I won´t tell on them. Beggar´s honour.”  
“As if it were that easy,” I snorted, but complied and let it go when she didn’t say anything else. I knew this path of interrogation wouldn’t bring me far, I could feel that, could feel that I couldn’t do anything to encourage her to speak, not with her in general. She might be willing to sell some particular scraps in bits and pieces, but she would never go so far as to betray her community and the people beggars and thieves like her associated with. Least of all to me, someone who was known to have ties into the Jarl´s Palace. After all, beggars and the like tended to have very strict rules and laws of personnel. I sighed. “Okay, then, what can you tell me about the victims? The three women the Butcher murdered? Anything connecting them, anything at all?”  
Silda straightened up with new vigour at that and happily started to ratter off names and families as well as non-family-affiliations, told about the girls´ looks, their jobs and their general outlook on life, their friends, their past-times, their doings and ramblings, their everything. If I didn’t know better, I´d have thought she had known all three women quite intimately, when in truth all of this was probably hard-gleaned knowledge, garnered from years of begging and sneaking around on the streets. I guess you were bound to pick up some things and habits that would one day prove useful and come in handy in a situation like this, if you did not have anything better to do all day long than of watch and study the people who may or may not be about to give charity. I nodded thoughtfully when she finished with her account. “Anything other than the margin of age and similar looks that´s connecting them, that could be the cause as to why exactly these three women have been murdered? And in that order?”  
“Not that I would have noticed,” said Silda and shook her head. “Oh, but wait,” she continued almost immediately, with an all new expression of someone who knew he had valuable information and was about to make her opposite pay dearly for it. Literally. I sighed inwardly, in my mind already parting with another coin of gold Ra and I had killed Draugr for so hard. I nodded, a sort of silent agreement passing between us, and she continued. “There were some pretty occult drawings on the bodies.”  
“Occult drawings?”, I echoed. “What is that supposed to mean?”  
“Well, I haven’t seen them for myself, all I can tell you is that the guards think it´s gotta have something to do with a fanatic dark magic worshipping cult or something.”  
“Mhm,” I mumbled. “Got a name? Or a lead?”  
“Sorry lad,” Silda shook her head, but seemed anything but sorry. Indeed, she looked rather pleased with herself and happy about how she was just about to earn her money. “But even beggars know where to draw the line. We listen, we observe, but we never probe, never press, never interfere. It´s the only way to stay alive these days.” I started to wonder, if all information I could glean from her was really and utterly true, or if she didn’t stretch the package with a few bits and pieces out of her own and ample imagination.  
“Have you told anyone else what you told me now?”  
“No,” she shook her head again. “People usually don’t trust pitiful beggars like me, much less listen to what they bramble about. And anyways, nobody ever asked for my explicit opinion before.”  
“What about Ulfric? Does he know? Has he tried to do anything about this?”  
She placed a hand on my shoulder and looked me deep into the eyes. “The High King has been looking for someone man enough to take care of this threat, yes, to ensure the safety of his city, but up till now none of his puny followers was able to catch the rouge. The guards assure the townsfolk they have everything under control perfectly, but I wouldn’t bet on that. I think that animal has to be caught by a professional, or not at all. And certainly not by any of the sissy boys and girls up at the palace guard. These days they get more useless by the minute, I fear, and are not up to any task like this anymore. Most of them usually don’t even chance a single look at people like me, at all these beggars, whores and orphans this whole town is teeming with. They think themselves much too fancy and high above any of us. No,” she shook her head in wistful regret, blinking at me all the while. “It´s time this city looked for a real man to take care of this situation.”  
“And you think I could be that man, is that it?”, I asked and was surprised by the openness in her eyes as I looked at her, frowning at the gentleness with which she touched my arm. It wasn’t her, and it was surely not how the two of us usually interacted. Then, suddenly, I felt something on my belt and couldn’t help but smirk at the look in her eyes – quickly masked – as I caught her other hand behind my back (the one that was not grabbing my shoulder intimately) and which had, just this very moment of an intimate exchange of feelings and affections, tried to steal into the pocket where I kept my purse tied to my belt and nimbly tried to relieve me of most of the money Ra and I had made with the things in the Draugr tomb last week. She had almost been successful too, her being too unobtrusive and sneaky even for me to notice, if in fact I hadn’t been consciously waiting for a move like that. “Really? If that´s not a mood-killer, I don’t know what is. Nice try, Silda,” I said now and she pursed her lips regretfully as I removed her hands from my cloak and stepped around the glowing bowl to face her off again across the safe expanse of glowing embers. “I´m touched by your complete lack of respect for your Thane. Next time try robbing someone who doesn’t know you the way I do, will you?”  
She flashed her disconcerting smile and spread her arms in a wide gesture as if to say Well, what can I do and shrugged her shoulders. I shook my head in irritation and prepared to go ascend the pedestal to finally get off the bleak streets and into the warmth of a friendlier place with a hopefully big and warming fire going in its midst. “Let me guess, you have a reputation to defend, right? Well, here´s something for your troubles,” I continued and flicked another coin her way, this time her fingers were too fast even for me to follow and the gold was gone even before her hand came up to wave goodbye as I retreated up the steps. “Oh, and Silda? Keep your fingers out of my pockets next time, or you´ll find yourself with a hand short in supply once I´m through with you. I won´t warn you again.”  
“You have a kind heart, my Thane. I shall not forget this.”  
“Yeah, well, we´ll see about that. For now, thanks for the information, I´ll see what I can do about it,” I said. “But no matter what, take care of yourself, especially with a lunatic running around murdering unprotected women at night. Watch yourself, will you?”  
“Always,” she cawed. “Even though I don’t seem to be his type. Anyways, the Butcher doesn’t know Windhelm the way I do. Nobody does.” With that she nimbly hopped back into the greying shadows and the increasing snowfall made it hard even for my keen eyes to follow her disappearance into the shrouding mist.  
I waited until I couldn’t distinguish between the white piles of snow slowly amassing against the sides of sombre buildings and the soft cotton of her tunic that almost had the exact same shade, and muttered under my breath. “Nobody does, indeed. I just hope for all our sakes that you´re right.” Then I ascended the steps to one set of the big and embellished wooden doors leading into the interior of Canlehearth Hall and disappeared into the comfort and the warmth, while behind me Windhelm succumbed to shadows and darkness and menacing shades of grey.

∞∞∞

“Well, hello there,” I said as I sauntered up to the bar slowly, allowing the elderly woman currently arranging her liquor bottles on the shelf behind to turn around and take me in, willing her to recognize me. “Isn´t that Early-Dawn, the best barkeeper in human history standing right in front of me? It´s been too long. Nice to see you again, Elda.” I approached the bar where she hesitated for only a moment and then welcomed me with a wide smile. “Still up and about, I see, even in your high age.”  
“And you are charming as ever, I can see,” she replied and mirrored my deep bow to her. There were not many tenants in yet, most would only start to filter in as soon as the sun went down for good and the darkness of this northern hemisphere would make all outside work impossible. Right now, I was the only one in the entrance room with the owner of Windhelm´s most favourite inn behind the bar, only one slumped scheme sat at a windowsill and was looking out the iced over windows into the snowy cold and the billowing snowflakes that could just be made out in the grey and unfocused weather beyond. I didn’t know him, but his red nose, the deep sunk eyes and the greying stubble on his cheeks, as well as the fraying hair at his temples, made me sure he was no immediate threat and I could allow myself to relax any warrior´s instincts awakened by Silda´s almost-success. “And stop trying to make me feel old. The way I know you and your kind, you´re probably many years my senior, even though you don’t look it. You were right, though, it really has been too long. I´ve been waiting for you to show up again on my doorstep for quite some time now, Haithabu,” continued Elda cheerfully while she set an as yet empty glass cup on the slab of wood in front of her and nodded towards the row of as of yet unoccupied chairs. I sighed thankfully – after all, I had spent the entire day in the saddle or on foot – and sank onto one of the hard but somehow still comfortable barstools. “So, what can I get you?”  
“What do you have for sale?”  
“Drink for the thirsty, food for the hungry,” she said with a wink and reached behind her for a bottle of some milky substance, apparently remembering perfectly what my body thought of any alcohol whatsoever. “But you don’t have to pay for it,” she purred as she filled my glass to the brim and I reached into my pockets to pay her. “It´s on the house. After all, after what you´ve done for me and my family, it really is the least I can do for you. So please, drink, and let me express my thanks once more.”  
“Thank you, Elda,” I said and nipped the luke-warm liquid carefully and rather sparely at first, then in ever bigger swallows as I came to find the taste truly delicious. It was neither warm nor hot, but also not truly cold but something indefinable in between and it tasted like something I had never before experienced in my life. It was sweet, yet not too much so, with a soft hint of cinnamon and honey yet also something entirely foreign and strange, deliciously welcome to warm me up from the inside. “Wow. This is awesome,” I marvelled in welcome surprise after I´d finished the first cup. “What in the divines´ name is in there?” She was quick to refill my glass with a smile and poured herself a separate one with which she toasted me.  
“Inventor´s secret,” she whispered, winking. “It´s something I´ve been experimenting with for some time now and I think I finally got the perfect mixture. It´s something like milk, yet with entirely different probabilities. Do you like it?”  
“I love it,” I stressed with emphasis and she smiled happily. “It´s awesome!”  
“Thank you, Haithabu,” she said and continued to sort through her inventory while she easily engaged me in an easy conversation. “I am happy that you ventured back here at long last. I almost feared I´d seen the last of you when I didn’t hear from you for more than a year. What have you been up to?”  
“Oh, this and that, really,” I replied nonchalantly. “Fighting wars, winning rebellions, defeating bloodthirsty emperors and saving the world; and winning hearts while I was at it. Just the usual stuff, you know? Nothing out of the ordinary.”  
Elda grinned and took her own bar stool to face me sitting. “I´ve missed your humour,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you most folks we´re getting here are either boring or drunk. Or, depending on how late it is, most of the times regrettably both. You´re a welcome change of tapestry.”  
“Thank you, dear lady. It warms my heart to hear you speak of me in such high tones.”  
“So,” Elda said finally, cutting down to business after we had exchanged some more niceties and engaged into some light small talk both of us seemed to be completely at ease with. It felt so good, so familiar to talk to her, almost as if she were a long-lost friend or even family, she made me feel warm and comfortable, even though, apart from the most basic things we talked about, we didn’t actually know all that much about each other. “What can I do for you? Knowing you and what you do for a living, I guess you´re not here for a stronger drink than that, are you? Nor, to just chat with an old and frail woman like me.”  
I shook my head slightly. “Drinking still doesn’t work with me and probably that´s for the better. You don’t want an out of control and drunken elf running wild in your tavern.”  
“Probably not,” she laughed, but still placed a mug of watered wine in front of me. “So, what brings you to a town like Windhelm in the middle of winter this time, Haithabu?”  
“Well, business, mostly,” I said with a suave shrug and took another swallow of the milky invention that tasted like the angels themselves had concocted it. “I came looking for work, and less than an hour in town I already found a few commissions to occupy myself with in the near future. I´ve got to say, cold and bleak as your dwelling is, but there are disproportionately many jobs to be found in this part of the world.”  
“Probably comes with being new capital of an entire country,” mused Elda thoughtfully. “But you´re right, there has been quite some things going on lately. It´s good someone actually tried to get rid of one thug or the other once in a while. The city´s not what it once was. It´s getting more dangerous and bloody, even for regular townsfolk. I´ve even stopped to leave this house after dark, out of fear what will await me out there. It´s not safe anymore.”  
“You mean the Butcher?”  
“So you´ve heard,” said Elda and dropped her voice to a whisper. “It´s an outright terror. He is said to only pursue attractive young victims, but… who can be entirely sure?” She shook her head jerkily. “Most women don’t seem to have the courage to venture outside after nightfall any more. Myself included. It really is a terrible business, all these murders, the fear, the grief… it´s almost as if Windhelm didn’t have enough problems of its own, even without a mindless cruel serial killer running wild inside of these damn walls every night. It´s enough to make one wonder how bad things can really get, isn’t it?”  
“Well,” I said calmly. “I am sorry to hear all about that, but let me assure you, I will try to do something about it. I won´t be able to stay all that long, but I promise, I´ll see to it that someone capable is left in charge to hunt that monster down. I may not have an especially great liking to the comprehensive community of Stormcloaks in general, but the people in this town certainly don’t deserve to be – quite literally – butchered.”  
“At least one Thane who still remembers his job,” mumbled Elda under her breath. “You have someone in particular in mind?”  
“Oh, I know just the right man to take care of this mess. He´s a mercenary like me, quite capable of doing that which most other of the Jarl´s men fail to get done, you´ll see. I´ll promise to talk to him about this later. Apart from that, is there anything about all of this mess you can tell me? Any information, any rumours, anything you might have picked up from a customer or some such?”  
“It is not my habit to eavesdrop or question my guests, Haithabu,” she informed me and shook her head. “But apart from the usual rumours and stories, I don’t know anything. As I said, I barely venture outside any more, especially not alone and only around noon where most people are about and no Butcher can go unseen. I am sorry, but I can´t help you.”  
“It´s okay,” I said. “It´s all right as long as you and all other women are safe. I´ll start investigating as soon as I´ve settled in, I promise. Together, we´ll find whoever is doing this.”  
“Thank you. This is very considerate of you, Haithabu.” She clapped her hands and sighed deeply. “Well then, back to happier subjects! You here for accommodation? I could have your usual room ready in just a few hours, if that is okay with you. But right now, it is still occupied and I consented to let her stay in there till after dinner. But if you return about an hour after dark, I´ll be glad as usual to house you. Provided, you wanna trade some amusing stories in return?”  
“Of course I do.” I bowed again, this time from sitting on the barstool in front of her. “Thank you. I really appreciate that. And indeed, it is the reason for my visit. But this time, the small room won´t do, we´ll be in need of something bigger. Something more suitable for two.”  
She began to grin widely and smiled at me happily. “Two, you say?”, she asked inquisitively. “Whom are you bringing? Is it someone I know? Someone I have met before? Don’t say you´ve found yourself a spouse at long last and haven’t told me of it yet. Oh, I am so excited!”  
“I did indeed.” I hid my smile in the delicious drink placed before me and took another big gulp. “I´m here with my partner. But it´s no one you know…”  
“Divines, really? That´s great. At least someone who has some good news for a change, after I more and more get the impression this world is made for suffering and loss. It is truly inspiring to see that there can still be goodness and love out there, spare as they may have grown. I´m truly happy for you here, Haithabu. But… tell me, where is she? When will I meet her?” I nodded and smiled, but didn’t elaborate as she quickly reached for a dusty key from the keypad behind her and placed it on the slab of wood in front of me. “I only have two rooms with double beds, but you are fortunate that just this morning this one became vacant. I´ll show you to it in a minute, but before I do, please tell me everything. Who is the lucky damsel? Where´d you meet? How long have you two been together? I am so curious!”  
I braced myself for her mimic to slip, for her hate to boil into an ugly and adamant grimace, for it hitting me squarely over the head and metaphorically sweeping me off my feet. I braced myself for the intolerance to hit and her ejecting me out into the cold, not wanting to serve someone like me, guys like us, damned to find another abode, damned forever to me mistreated, shunned, hated. Elda and I were not friends, not exactly, we saw each other much too infrequently and knew much too little about the other to be truly intimate. But we were good acquaintances, Elda and I going way back. She had been manning the bar even when I had entered this inn for the very first time, about sixty years ago, many winters before Ra was even born. Even back then, we had found great liking in the other, and I had come to regard Elda as one of the few allies I had in this bleak and dismal city. She had been a young maiden back then, had had her entire life in front of her, and yet, after sixty years of uncertain and insecure times, here she still was, as unerringly and irreplaceably, firm as a rock in a raging sea and cause for me to smile every time I walked in through this door. I tried to persuade myself not to care, tried to convince my consciousness that it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. She was a nice person, kind-hearted and good and she was one of the very few people who seemed to like me for myself and not for any favour of my interchangeable masters or associates, not because she hoped I would do some costly errands for herself without charging a coin, nor to put in some good words with someone influential or fierce that I somehow knew. She was honest and true, and I believed she didn’t want anything from me other than my goodwill, friendliness and a good story or two once in a while when we sat together in front of a dying fire, long after her tavern had emptied out and even the last drunk had stumbled home, after the tenants had all retired to bed, after even her own husband had fallen asleep. I tried to tell myself that no matter what I told her now, it shouldn’t bother her, because she knew me and she knew I was not only and exclusively defined by my sexuality and whom I slept with, but was and could be so much more. Most people didn’t seem to get that, didn’t seem to understand the basics of love and life. But if anyone did, it certainly had to be Elda. Especially now, now that she was past her zenith and had a full and coloured life of multiple experiences to fall back on, to consult. And even if she didn’t approve, I told myself it didn’t really matter. What I had wanted to make Ralof see, make him believe too, had not been a lie after all. I really should try not to let what people thought about me get in my head and mess with my mind. Either she accepted us or she wouldn’t. And if she didn’t, shame on her exclusively, because there was nothing we had to be ashamed of. I was still struggling with the concept of not letting other people´s judgement affect me, but it was a good resolution and I would do my best to act on it. From now on, always. It was about time the world was taught some tolerance. “Well,” I said slowly, playing with the rim of my empty glass distractedly, regarding her reaction closely but still somewhat warily. “It´s more of a solid Stormcloak captain than a flimsy damsel. You´ll get to know him tonight, so I´d best not give away too much in advance, shall I?”  
“Aha, well then… Wait, did you say… him?”, she asked, as if she hadn’t heard correctly, cocking her head.  
After a deep breath, I managed a quite decisive “Yes. Him.”  
“Huh,” she said and studied me closely, then chuckled, as if to herself. “Well that’s unusual… Wouldn´t have thought you were one of these guys. That sure as Oblivion is new, but hey, whatever, I´m looking forward to meeting him. If you say he´s nice, I´ll trust you on that. After all, your knowledge of human nature has already saved my life once, I won´t question you twice. So sure, do what you have to.” She looked at me closely and went back to cleaning some already impeccably blinking glasses. The key to our room sat forgotten right in front of me. An uncomfortable silence was about to descend, Elda scrubbing and polishing, me sitting on the barstool all dressed up and with nowhere to go, not sure whether I should stay or go, not sure if something between us hadn’t irrevocably changed after all or not. Just when I was about to reach for the big, golden key on the bar, slink off my stool and retreat to our chambers dejectedly she looked up at me with an odd expression and her clear eyes held me in place immovably. “Well, do I get an account now, or what are you waiting for? Better weather?”  
“An… account?”, I repeated, hesitantly, not sure what she wanted from me.  
“Well, if I remember correctly, you were just about to tell me who he is, where you´ve met, how you came to be together, everything, really. Or is that nowadays deemed a secret too?”  
“What… I… no,” I stammered, taken aback. I needed a moment to get my thoughts straight again before I could wrap my mind around the fact that I had not in fact put her off or any such thing at all. “I… just thought… you didn’t…”  
“What? Want to hear it?”, she looked at me in a truly reprimanding fashion, almost as if she was rebuking a kid for stealing some sweets just before dinner. “I wanna hear it all! Why the hell wouldn’t I?”  
“Most people usually don’t,” I said, trying to sound as light and springy as she did while in truth I felt like the weight of a very, very large stone had been taken from my shoulders and I just wanted to hug her there and then for her complete lack of intolerance and rejection.  
“Well,” she said. “I´m not most people, am I? You should know that better than most by now.”  
“No, I guess you really aren’t,” I replied, immeasurably relieved. “You´re one of a kind, Elda, really.”  
“As are you, my friend, as are you,” she nodded gravely, then sat down on her own stool again. “All right. Now that that´s off the table, pray start at the very beginning. I´m really curious what kind of guy was able to win your very special heart. I wanna hear all the details, Haithabu, all of them. After all, we have nowhere else to go, it´s storming abominably outside and time´s for once on our side. So, tell me, who is the lucky devil?”  
I smiled openly and was for once able to let true and utter happiness bubble up and spread through my tense limbs and knuckles freely, a feeling that usually only made itself known on the surface when I was all alone with Ralof, far, far away from any other human being that could disrupt our peaceful and intimate togetherness. I really wouldn’t have fathomed I´d have much to laugh in taut and dismal Windhelm. “Well, not to over-egg the pudding, but I see in Ra more of an angel than a devil, if you get my drift. He literally saved my life the first time we ever met, preventing a dragon quite effectively to grill my meatsuit, so he already started pretty high up on the estimation ladder. Without him, I would never have made it out of there alive. From there on, in retrospection, it now all seems like we were just meant to be, like this was the only way things could ever have turned out, the two of us just following our destiny from that moment on. It seems inevitable now, getting together, loving each other. Getting to know him further was like getting to know myself better, really, we fit together that well. Most of the times, anyways. Of course there are differences, there are little arguments and fights, but as of yet, I am still convinced Ra´s the very one for me. Not even the revolution could dim any of his brightness or change him more than it changed all and every one of us. I guess I should really be quite glad to have found him like that. That he loves me just the way I am, without wanting to change anything, much as I love him.”  
“From your lips to the divines´ ears,” agreed Elda wistfully. “So, you fought in the revolution together? Was he a Stormcloak?”  
“Still is,” I said. “With all his heart and spirit. He´s up at the Jarl´s palace as we speak, receiving new orders. He was summoned here quite urgently and upon our arrival made for the King´s quarters immediately. I came with him as the fact that we both do this mercenary thing for a living is not really the most benevolent prerequisite for a functioning, enduring relationship. It can be hard enough as it is to find any few days every other week to get to see each other briefly, so I felt we had to take every opportunity we could get and make it count, to actually spend some time together. Even if that means one of us has to work and the other keeps some clients waiting. But for me, Ra´s totally worth it and, so far, it worked out just fine. It´s not always easy, but as both of us want to make it work, it always works, one way or the other.”  
“I think so too,” nodded Elda, then narrowed her eyes at me and cocked her head again, hesitating in her automated work as her mind seemed to zero in on something in particular. “And his name is Ra?”  
“Ra, yes,” I nodded emphatically. “It´s actually an abbreviation of his full name. He is –.”  
“Wait, Ra as in…. short for Ralof? Like Ralof of Riverwood?” I nodded, taken aback that she seemed to know my lover after all, speechless by the force and joy intermingling in her voice as she spoke of him. “The Ralof of Riverwood? The captain of our glorious rebels and right hand to Galmar himself? The famous commander of our forces? The hero of the battle for Solitude?”  
“You know him?”  
“You know him? Seriously? Where have you spent the last three years?” Elda gave a short, shrill laugh and shook her head. “It´s rather a question of who doesn’t know him, really” she continued, still goggling at me. “Your sweetheart is quite the legend in this part of Skyrim. You must have heard the stories people are telling on the streets. A living legend, indeed, quite famous since he saved Galmar´s broad ass and from what I hear the entire revolution with it. At least, that´s been the talk on the street.”  
“Oh, he did that a few times in fact,” I said affectionately. “He´s really quite the life-saver, at least where I´m concerned. Quite good at it too, if I may say so. After all, I´m speaking from experience here.”  
“That may be true,” nodded Elda. “But I have one special occasion in mind. The one, where without him everything would truly have been lost. Where he stood alone against an entire battalion of enemies and came away unscathed. The one where he alone stood between the revolution, its brains and calculus, and utter obliteration by General Tullius and his forces. The story where one man alone did the unthinkable, the undoable and saved all our freedom with a single strike of his sharp sword. Know what I´m talking about?”  
“Oh, that,” I drawled, sarcastic for once. “Well, it did indeed happen, just in case you were wondering.” I confirmed her unspoken question with a curt nod and the remembrance that came with it suddenly filled my mind – of that accursed day where Ulfric´s bodyguards had made a mistake and suddenly the entire Stormcloak elite had faced death, of Ralof and me being there, together with Zulu and Maryse and the rest of Ra´s team, fighting for our dear lives and that of their freaking king, desperate to escape the perfectly planned ambush, of all of us realizing all the fighting wouldn’t be enough, that we would never all be able to make it out of there alive, not with that many against us, not with the Imperials in the clear advantage. And ultimately, I remembered Ralof that day, dirty, sweaty and bloody like all the rest of us were by then, desperate and nearly giving up, yet still with some fire left in him, with the will to survive, the will to fight. He had brandished his sword and pressed to the foremost front of the men and woman holding the imperials off, dying for their king and the ideal of freedom and independence he represented for each and every one of them, and sacrificed himself to grant all the rest of us some respite to breathe, some respite to flee, precious time to get away and save ourselves and the king. And he had done all of that all by himself. All alone against a horde of enemies, the way every Nord in these lands – at least every Nord I knew, which by now were a disturbing many after the revolution and stuff – wanted to die. His honour is great, the others had murmured and withdrawn dutifully, leaving their captain to die for them, to distract the Imperials long enough for them to get their king out of there, to send for some backup and aid. A death like this was honourable, was just, was craved for and respected in all nordic society, and Ralof truly had wreaked havoc amidst our foes, yet we had barely been able to save him. He had done this, all of this, for the greater good, to keep his king and betters safe, to save the spirit of the revolution and maintain the idea of freedom and resistance and he had succeeded where most others would certainly have failed. Yet, he hadn’t hesitated a second to give himself for his men, for his country, hadn’t wavered a second to sacrifice himself rather than having the Imperials lay waste to his unit of men, not thinking of me even once, not thinking of what this decision would do to me – what his death would mean to me – not looking back at me at all before he charged the enemy, before he run to embrace certain death with open arms. I had been too far away to reach out, to call out, the battle had separated us, and even though I tried, it was too late already, I was swept back along with the rest of them, unable to do anything, unable to defend my lover, unable to fight with the lonely Stormcloak, a lonesome, deserted speck of midnight blue all alone against a horde of reds. It still haunted me in my worst nightmares. Yet, somehow, I didn’t ever find out how, Ralof made it through, did the unthinkable and survived. He fought for dear life even as the rest of the Stormcloaks surged back and took care of king and personal well-being, dragging away with them the few desperate strugglers like me, who tried violently but eventually futilely to get back to the front, to get back to my man. Hurt, bruised, exhausted and barely able to keep standing, let alone raise his bloody sword over a helmet-less head bathed in sweat and grime and dirt, and yet, he managed and saved the day, the revolution and the nordic freedom all in a single stroke of luck against an enemy in superior power. A weak smile was all that was left on his lips, he managed a reassuring nod to all those close to despair, to all those too afraid to move. His honour is great, a few survivors first whispered, then mouthed, then the chant quickly rose and in a second, the men around me cheered and whooped and shouted out the name of their captain – the name of their hero who had saved them all single-handedly – in hoarse and raucous shouts of glee and victory. I must have been the only one not singing, the only one not reeling in happiness. When Ra finally found me in the crowd, when his eyes finally found mine and he noticed the tears streaming down both of my cheeks and the hurt, betrayal and overwhelming fear that still must have been painted on my face and in my eyes palpably, he suddenly sagged and the joyous smile slipped from his face. I was there by his side as fast as my burning feet could carry me, as fast as I could press through the throng of idiots surrounding him, oppressing him, was there with him when he finally fainted and the strain and exercise of battle, his sacrifice and the loss of blood from multiple but thankfully mostly shallow cuts all took their toll on his body and he sank to the floor. I had pulled his head into my lap and cried uninhibitedly, without caring how this might have looked to all the others, without giving a single damn as to what his men might think. The only thing that mattered in this moment was Ra. Ra, bloody and bruised but far from beaten, Ra´s chest that moved even after everything he put his body through, even after more than one imperial sword had found its target, Ra, who lay cradled in my arms like a peacefully slumbering child without a care in this world. Ra hurt, Ra wounded, Ra, who didn’t hesitate a second to throw his life away for a stupid rebellion, who did not think about what his loss would mean to the people who love him more than they love themselves.  
I could remember this quite vividly, it was a memory indelibly etched into my mind and nothing I would ever try, no matter how much time might pass, I would never ever get rid of it again. These moments, this overwhelming fear, the worry and the pain I felt every time I looked at him for many weeks afterwards, still haunted me in my blackest nightmares. “It did happen,” I said again. “Just not the way everyone seems to remember it today. It felt much different to all those who were there that day, than the way people retell the story now,” I concluded, forcing away the drifting thoughts I had felt that distant day, many miles from here, and focused instead on the milky white fluid in my cup which Elda just refilled from a new pitcher from under the bar. “It was much bloodier, much more violent and dire. And the outcome far from for sure for much too long a time. He almost died, that day…” I drifted off, too moved to go on, my voice catchy in my throat, too caught up in memories of bloody, beaten and so incredibly weak Ralof to share any of my anxieties and fears with the friendly landlady.  
“You really love him quite fiercely, don’t you?”, said Elda solemnly after a little pause and fixed me up with an even, level gaze, her eyes sparkling and expressing intent emotions as well.  
I felt my throat go dry in an instant and I had to swallow hard a few times in a row to get rid of the sudden lump in my throat before I could answer her. “Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, I guess I really do.”  
She nodded, as if to herself, then spoke with determination in her voice. “In that case, you need to do me a favour, would you?”  
She laid a warm hand on my arm when I looked up at her questioningly. “What is it?”  
“Don’t ever let him go again,” she said and if she heard how unusual such a request from anyone´s mouth sounded to me, she didn’t show, didn’t give away the slightest hint that she noticed my immense feelings of protectiveness wherever Ra was involved and where our relationship was concerned in general. “If what you guys share really is true and wholehearted love for each other, then what you have found, Haithabu, is something quite unique and marvellous indeed. And as long as you love him, you have to fight for it. Please, never give up on that, you hear me? Will you do that for a sentimental old woman like me?”  
“I… yes, sure,” I nodded once more, taken aback by the force in her words, surprised at the apparently far-reaching feelings she said this with, puzzled by the soft pressure of her shrivelled and aged, yet still surprisingly strong fingers that were grabbing my arm, digging into the sleeves of my clothing. It was a truly strange and uncommon thing for her to say, an odd request from everyone except the very best of friends, especially with that much stress and emphasis to her words. “I´m not planning to leave him. But… what is it to you? People don’t usually seem to care for my personal happiness very much. And even less so, once they learn what it is that makes me happy. You´re probably the first one ever who wasn’t offended, wasn’t disgusted once you found out. The first one who didn’t freak. Why do you care?”  
She sighed and gave me a wistful smile, though I was sure she didn’t actually look at me, at least not really. Her gaze reminded me of someone reliving something far-away and remote, as if she was someplace else in her mind, remembering something from her colourful past or rediscovering a long-lost memory, or something equally moving somewhere in between. She looked almost regal, that way. “Oh Haithabu,” she said, nostalgically rubbing her temples. “I care about you because I like you. You have saved my life once and I shall never forget that. You have been like a friend to me, throughout the decades of my life, even though we may not see much of each other for months on end, sometimes even years. Yet, here you are, as happy and contended as I have ever seen you, and I am happy with and for you. You´re a good man. You deserve this, Haithabu, you deserve to be the one getting a happy ending finally, after you devoted your entire life to helping other people, taking risks for anyone who payed you, protecting them, saving them. It´s time you take a break and looked after yourself, my boy. I want that for you, I prayed for that for you. Especially after the last time you were here… True and requited love is something immeasurably precious and rare. Everyone I know, at least, had to learn to manage without, some way or another. But with you, I see that it can be different, that it is possible at all. And I do not begrudge you a little peace of mind now. The way you sound, the way you look, you have found yourself a jewel. All I´m asking of you is to hold on to him, and to allow yourself to be happy once in a while. I´ve known you for many years now, and yet, the moment you walked into this door, the moment I saw your face, recognized the light in your eyes, I knew immediately something was different. You seem changed, somehow, and it is not a bad change at all. For once, put your needs and desires in front of anybody else´s and allow yourself to love and be loved like you deserve it. Will you promise me that? Can you do that?”  
There was an all-new and even bigger lump in my throat this time and my voice was not at all entirely steady when I tried to mask the deep and welling feelings these words wanted to bring to my surface with an amused smile and a quippy retort, though I was in no doubt she was perfectly able to see right through the entire charade. But I had a reputation to lose, and I didn’t want her to see me soften up about anyone or anything. “When did you go all soft and soppy? That´s not at all how I remember you. What happened to the staunch and resolute woman who used to show me the ropes in town?”  
“Softness is one of the many virtues of old age, my dear,” purred Elda and finally let me off the hook, though not without patting my arm in a motherly fashion and whispering: “Captain Ralof is lucky to have someone like you by his side, someone who cares for him as deeply as you do, who loves as uninhibitedly as I see you love him. I wish from my heart that the two of you will attain happiness. Both of you deserve it.”  
“Thank you,” I said quietly and very seriously. “Elda, this means a lot to me. I… I don’t know what to say.”  
“Then don’t say anything. Don’t mention it,” she said with a dismissive flick of her hand and straightened up. All of a sudden, she was back to being the tough and quippy bartender I knew, only the lines on her face and the lasting imprint of her fingers on my arm indicating the emotional conversation we had had before. “Now I am even more curious to get to know your sweetheart,” she continued, winking. “I´d never in my life thought of housing anyone that high up in the chain of command.” She furrowed her broad brows as she started rummaging around in the drawers all around the bar. “I hope he´ll like it here, I hope my humble quarters will be enough. If you wish to, I´ll arrange something special and more suitable to the likes and needs of –“  
I held up my hand and Elda quieted at once. “Elda, please. Don’t beat yourself up about this. Don’t you worry about either Ralof or me. Whatever you offer will be just fine with us. After all, I´ve barely ever spent the night in a homelier wayside inn, believe me.” I actually had, just for the record, there was many a tavern and quite some inns who were more comfortable or homely than this dilapidated building, but seeing her suddenly beam at me with an all new measure of gratitude, I figured it´d better not mention any of that right now. “So, we´ll just take the regular room, if you please, and we´ll pay for it on top of that. No,” I continued, without drawing a breath, just as she opened her mouth to protest, and pulled out some of the coins I had formerly saved successfully from Silda´s subtle fingers. “Take these, I implore you, Elda. You are in need of them, and we are happy to give them to you, believe me; there are not many people in this land I like to pay more than you. You are kind and forthcoming and have done a great deal of good in your time. You earned this.” I placed the little purse on the counter and she took up the money hesitantly and then handed me the key. “Just grant us the privacy of a room and a comfortable bed for a night and we´ll be at your service.”  
“That should not be a problem,” said Elda as she emerged from behind the bar and I took up our saddlebags. “Come along.” She led me through a long aisle to a big and comfortably heated chamber right at the back of the building, facing the Jarl´s palace high up on its hill, enthroned on the city´s highest point and reigning over the other buildings with a plump and massive kind of grace I could not take any pleasure in whatsoever. I shivered, despite the warmth of the building. The room though was one of the most comfortable quarters I had slept in in more than a year or so, yet also humble and decent at the same time. The furniture was on a rather spartan scope, yet very fine and intricately timbered, every last piece of wardrobe, bed, nightstand, table and chairs fitting together perfectly, completing the impression of an unusually clean and well-kept lodge. The bed was big, really big, bigger than most I had ever seen, with an actual feather mattress and down pillows and blankets, unlike the usual straw pile and sweaty rags you got in most other roadside inns. The bed was made to the crease of the sheets, the wood of the wardrobe and the little chest to the left and the small group of chairs with a table in their midst beside the fireplace were polished clean as a whistle and shone in the soft light of the lanterns that hung in little sconces along the walls in even intervals. Each side of the bed had a separate nightstand and on both of them stood bowls with freshly cut flowers and a scented candle flickered on the laid-out table, spreading a subtle and unobtrusive yet immeasurably delicious scent of lavender blossoms in high summer throughout the room. Lavender was Ra´s favourite flower and whenever I was close enough, I could discern a soft connotation of the smell of the lilac beauty on him, had come to associate this particular scent with Ralof in general, and of many nights spent alone with Ra in particular, it was my smell of contentment, of ease, of happiness. I inhaled deeply and with closed eyes and felt more than saw Elda turn to me expectantly.  
“Lavender´s his favourite,” I said affectionately. “It´s as if the gods have had a hand in it.”  
“Well, call it a crazy woman´s intuition, “said Elda. “So, what do you think? Is this enough? Will it do?” She laughed anxiously and swept her hand around the room. “This is how I usually have the rooms ready, but if it lacks anything, if you or the Captain need anything else, please tell me. Just come to me or my assistant Susanna and we´ll make your stay here as comfortable as our means allow. So, what do you say, do you like it? Will he like it?”  
“It is perfect,” I smiled, unable to get enough of the delicious smells and warmth and comfort this room promised. “I love it, thank you, Elda. And seeing the care and the preciseness you prepared this room with, I am sure Ra will love it too. He´s quite the fan of order and tidiness.” Swelled with pride and happiness, Elda took her leave and after I had discarded our bags and unpacked what little I would need the one night I planned to stay here, I went over to the bed and – wanting only to test its softness and comfort for a mere moment – woke up several hours later from a deep and utterly relaxing nap.  
I started upright and darted for the window. After my initial disorientation had fled and I was able to get a grip on my surroundings again, remembering where exactly I was and what I was doing here, I sighed in relief when I saw that it was not entirely dark yet. I wouldn’t be too late after all. Relaxing a great deal, I went to the washbasin in the corner and splashed my face with agreeably warm water, rubbing the lingering sleep out of my eyes. I must have been more tired by far than I knew, to submerge into a slumber that deep. After straightening and refastening my hair into the customary ponytail, I only pondered for a second whether or not to take my full stock or make do with a less armoured attire. I quickly decided against it – with a mindless killer running loose on the streets of Windhelm, it was probably better to have some extra weapons (literally) up your sleeve and I kept my armour on, though I left behind any helmet and exchanged gauntlets for furry gloves and put on a fur-lined cape that closed all the way up to my throat. The last thing I donned were my bow and arrows, usually not good to fight with in any town or village, but today I did not want to leave anything to chance, and though the Butcher had as of yet only offed handsome young woman, in my mind, you couldn’t be too careful anyways. Cause, cross my heart, who was to say he didn’t start dismembering gullible young men tomorrow. Better be safe than sorry, I thought. Despite, there was never such a thing as too many weapons on a body.  
Having finished preparations like that, another look outside into the bleak greyness made me nod as if to myself and I decided it had to be something close to dusk, even though you could not really discern it by the colour of the sky, the humming of the air or the position of the sun. By the looks of it the blizzard was still in full swing, and entire Windhelm sunk in a uniform grey mess. I shouldered my quiver and made for the door, careful to close it all the way after me, so that the delicious smell would remain inside and Ra would be happy when we returned together later. When I emerged into the bar room I saw Elda working in her usual spot and serving what had to be regulars with a wide smile and a bawdy grin on her wrinkly face. The beer and booze changed hands faster than I could say knife and Elda – together with her cook Nils and their handmaiden Susanna – were busy to keep the ale flowing and the customers happy, the tavern filling slowly but steadily for the evening and a busy night. Just when I was about to disappear into the antechamber, Elda must have spotted me and winked in my direction.  
“Where are you off to?”, she asked. “There´s an outright storm going on outside. Sure you wanna venture out there right now? And with your physique?”  
“I am touched by your concern for me, Elda,” I replied. “But I have a date. And I don’t want to keep him waiting and freezing in the dark, so I´d better go. Besides, he´d probably kill me if I stood him up like this. And today of all days.”  
“Oh, why´s that?”  
“Well, we had… let´s say some differences of opinions earlier, and I feel like I shouldn’t leave him alone tonight. Besides, what could be more romantic than freeze to death hand in hand out there? That way, we won´t ever be separated again, sharing an existence of being icy statues side by side, together forever. Who wouldn’t want that?”  
She laughed and served the next customer in line. “All right, then. He that will not hear must feel. Anyways, have fun, you boys, and don’t let your guards down too much out there. After all, the streets of Windhelm are not as safe anymore as they once were. Watch yourselves.”  
“Thanks. Will do,” I said and nodded gravely. “You too. See you later, then.”  
“Till later. Oh, and Haithabu? It´s good to have you back, seriously. I am excited for your stories about your adventures abroad. You´ll have to tell me everything you’ve been up to since the end of the revolution, since I saw you last. I´m thrilled to hear about what you did all that time. So, just because you have someone much more interesting to occupy yourself with and to spend the night with, don’t you forget all about me! I miss listening to your stories of dragons and giants and even weirder things still, and fooling around with you while all other tenants are getting drunk as a skunk.”  
I smiled and winked at her before I braced to step back out into the impending darkness and worse, the freezing cold of the sharp wind, blowing thick and wet snowflakes through the frozen streets. “I´d never forget about you, Elda. You know that. See you later.”  
“Have fun. And don’t forget to bring your sweetheart. I´m really quite curious about him.” She lifted her hand in farewell and continued to smile at me until I closed the door behind my back with a decisive thud and started for the Stone Quarter where the Dark Elves lived. Well, that went better than I expected, I thought as the door fell shut behind my back and I saw myself confronted with the harsh reality of mountainous snowfalls in wintery Windhelm once more. Sighing tonelessly – the wind was too sharp and screechy for me to hear my own voice anyways – I hunched my shoulders into an unattractive arch, but it was the only way to keep the wind out and the cold bearable. Blinking against the billowing snow, I carefully sidestepped the worst drifts and started my way down into the cauldron of Windhelm.

∞∞∞

“So, have you heard about what´s going on here at night? About people going missing, about mysterious deaths, about anything at all?” The two of us were standing in front of the general store just at the tip of the Dark Elf Quarter that belonged to a sturdy woman named Sadri. I had met her just as she had been about to go out, and convinced her to sell me a few of her goods before she left. The house was stony and square like most of the rest of all structures in town, but had a certain lopsided and derelict connotation to its looks, which was so typical for most abodes the Dark Elves had made their home and which leaned against the inside of the towering city walls like an especially rickety and frail old man who could no longer stand up straight all by himself, who was sorely in need of a supporting cane.  
“The cold-blooded murders, you mean?”, replied Sadri and looked me square in the eyes. She had quite exceptional ones as I was to notice in the bleak light that tinted everything around us dull and colourless – one with all amber irises, the other entirely red – but then, Sadri herself was quite an exceptional woman. The eye colour was a mark for tainted blood, giving away the fact that she had neither two elvish parents nor two nordic ones, the mix somewhere in between with an elf and a Nord having a child. It was not forbidden, not explicitly anyways, but Nords and Elves tended to clash in Windhelm and the city was quite infamous throughout Skyrim for its different ethnic and cultural majorities not getting along particularly well. That could probably not be said for Sadri´s parents, I thought, but then, there were always exceptions that proved the rule. Sadri didn’t wear this token of her mixed heritage as a flaw or a defilement, though, but as a badge of honour and pride, as a shield against people who wanted to hurt her, to taunt or to project the sins of her parents on the innocent child, defying them and their derisions with head held high and staunch stance.  
“So, you are certain they are murders?”, I inquired.  
“What else could they possibly be?”  
“Don’t know,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and squinting my eyes to avoid the snow blowing at me from the very vertical front, neither my cloak nor my cape good enough any more for ample protection against the biting cold. I was barely out of Candlehearth Hall, not fifteen minutes out in the open, and already freezing so much I could hardly talk without slurring. “Wild animal maybe?”  
“In the city proper?”, said Sadri with a cold and glass-cutting sharp laugh. “I don’t think so. Besides, a friend of mine knows a Stormcloak guard. They try to keep these information from spreading to avoid a mass panic and people going nuts, but all of the victims had cruel knife- or sword-wounds. Cruel and twisted and uncommon for a simple murder – from what I heard they look more like mashed up religious or cultic sacrifices than anything else we imagine when we think of corpses – but they were definitely not killed by an animal.” She blinked at me. “Except, of course, you´ve heard of animals who can wield a blade and cause such strife and strain?”  
I frowned and thought of all the monsters I had seen and fought against in my time. Many of them could not be described as people at all, even though they looked remotely human or even manlike and could speak and interact with themselves much like nordic society. There were vampires, obviously, and Ghouls and Falmer and Draugr and Trolls and many, many others besides that I could think of extemporaneously. But Sadri didn’t have to know that. After all, I had broached the subject because I wanted to learn more about the killer and the situation in general and maybe get a lead on who and why and how this was done. I didn’t want to worry simple townsfolk such as this innocent grocer, so I just shrugged and dropped the subject. Sadri had told me everything she knew, after all, and it was time to get moving again, and if possible out of the forceful wind channel the streets of Windhelm seemed to have converted into. I was desperate to get out of the cold and wetness and – most of all – I was looking forward to dinner because I was really, really hungry by now.  
“All right then,” I closed with a sigh and thrusted my hands back into my pockets. They were almost cold and thus also hard enough to use them as hammers now but I tried desperately to get a bit of warmth and feeling back in it by flexing my fingers and making the blood circulate. I almost winced at the comprehensive pain and seized immediately to move any of the extremities I did not need for walking and speaking right now. My muscles screamed so loud I was convinced Sadri had to hear every single one of them, even over the omnipresent roar of the soaring wind. “Thank you, miss. Come to me when you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, okay. Anything suspicious or weird, no matter what, anything at all. I´ll be in the inn if you need me.”  
“Will do,” replied Sadri and turned to leave. “Now, I should be on my way. There´s a thorough storm coming, I can feel it in my bones.”  
“Hey, Sadri,” I said belatedly and she turned around again, halfway obscured by the thick tangle of snowflakes all around us and even to my eyes nothing more right now than a blurry smudge of white. “Watch out for yourself. Be safe.”  
She smiled. “You too. You know, you should really get out of the cold, my Thane. You look awful.”  
I tried a wane smile, but felt like my face had been carved into solid ice, so my parting expression may have come across somewhat odd or even unfriendly to basically harmless Sadri, but I was too preoccupied about the temperatures to care about that too much right now. I hunched my shoulders as much as I could manage, pulled my cape tight against the volatile gales sweeping the streets and pathways of Windhelm clean of most evening activity and tried to hug the walls and facades of all the leaning stone block buildings – uncomfortable as that may make me – in search for at least a little protection from the coming tempest of winter. I finally reached the agreed meeting place by the harbour gates – the only access from the extensive port area to the city via close to two hundred narrow and very steep steps carved into the face of the rock – and came to stand against a pile of seemingly empty ship barrels ready to be taken back downstairs to be shipped sometime in the near future, presumably before another obscuring winter storm hit. They were all reeking abominably of fish and salt, seaweed and human waste – none of which I was a particularly big fan of – and I had to fight an inner urge to retch. I soon scrunched up my nose to be able to bear the smells at least, as I didn’t want to walk and wait out into the middle of the little plaza, for fear of being permanently turned into a frozen-solid, immobile snowman.  
“Hey there,” a tiny little voice suddenly said from off to my left. I wheeled all around disorientedly and momentarily thought there was something wrong with my eyesight, or that the billowing snows were clouding my vision, as I didn’t see anyone anywhere. Almost sure I had imagined the friendly but yet determined words, I reacted to the soft tug at my elbow with an unprepared for jerk and a hand quickly slipped into my weapons belt to draw the steel sword strapped to my waist. But then I glanced down and discovered her standing right next to me, merely reaching up to the height of my elbow and looking at me curiously, eyes big, but no apparent danger in sight anywhere. “I´m down here, mister.”  
“Oh, hi,” I answered. It was a little girl, I saw, clothed in formerly fine attire that had either been worn too long or seen too many excursions and trips into mudholes than was good for it, or – as it seemed to my eyes – in her special case doubtlessly both. Its seams were fraying, the colours were blurry and had a washed quality to them and there were irredeemable stains around the collar and the hems. She had a piercing set of alert eyes that were looking at me with barely concealed nosiness and her mouth was distorted into a grimace of deep pondering or at least something very close to it.  
“Are you new in town?”, asked the girl curiously and seized my up with a frown on her tiny little face. “I have never seen you before. And I know everyone who lives here,” she continued proudly. “By name and by sight. And I know neither of yours.”  
I smiled despite the biting cold and dug my hands deeper into my warming pockets, hunching my shoulders, trying to shrug without looking completely puny or uncomfortable.  
“Well, I am no stranger to Windhelm,” I answered truthfully. “I´ve been here before quite a few times. But if that´s what you mean, then no, I don’t really live here.”  
“Then what are you doing here now? You look miserable.”  
I had to chuckle and felt the frozen skin around the corner of my mouth crack. “Thank you very much,” I said and shrugged again. “I am cold.”  
I took her up with a quick, scrutinizing glance as well and found myself in wonder. She was thin and lanky and her dress several inches too short. Her hair was dark brown and pretty mussily tied up in a lopsided pony tail, so that wild strands swirled around her face in the blowing gales and she threw her head back distractedly every few seconds to blink the hair out of her eyes. She looked at me curiously, as though the cold and the wind and the snow did not bother her in the least, and didn’t even seem to mind the flakes of ice clustering in the folds of her dirty dress or accumulating on the bare skin of her face, her arms, her neck and throat. She carried a wicker basket in one hand and despite the fact that her hair was unusually dark, her skin was light and her eyes as clear as two preciously pristine crystals, both of these characteristics definitely marking her as nordic, if it were not for her hair.  
“Yes, I can see that. You are doing it all wrong, you know,” she informed me and nodded knowingly, decidedly.  
“Am I?”, I asked cautiously, curious as to where this conversation would lead. “So, what are you suggesting I do instead?”  
“It´s quite easy, really. You mustn’t let the weather get to you. You have to train your body to be oblivious to the cold, to go unbothered by the gales. That´s the only way you´ll stop feeling cold in this kind of climate. Otherwise, you´ll sooner or later die, cause I´ve never been anywhere else, and around here, it is always like this.”  
“Is that how you do it?”, I asked. “Pretend it doesn’t exist and, snap, you don’t feel the cold anymore? Is that why you can survive walking around dressed like that.”  
I indicated her spare and almost gossamer clothing and couldn’t help but be remembered of the way Ra never froze. He never bothered to put a blanket over himself, never bothered to dress nearly as stiflingly warm as I did before venturing outside in the high north of Skyrim such as here, laughed at me teasingly whenever I put on double socks in my fur-lined boots when he said he was comfortable enough to go barefooted, would even do so frequently if he wouldn’t need to wear boots as well in order to run more quickly. But whenever I touched him, whenever I felt his skin with mine, he was still always comfortably warm. It had to be a genetic thing shared by all people of nordic descent, I mused.  
“I guess,” the girl confirmed, shrugging worldly-wise. “That, and the fact that I am a Nord,” she continued proudly, proving my former assumptions to be true. “We are more robust than people from the south, I guess. You´re not a Nord,” she added as if in an afterthought, cocking her head, and I couldn’t discern if it was a question or a simple stating of a well-known fact. Possibly both, I thought, but decided to answer anyways.  
“No, I am not,” I said. “I am an elf.”  
“Really? You´re not like the other elves I´ve seen either,” she said thoughtfully and tried to peer behind my cape to see for herself if I was indeed telling the truth or just messing with her. “Are you sick?”  
She had keen eyes indicating a very intelligent and sharp young woman and I kept wondering what she was doing out here, talking up perfect strangers. I felt sure her parents had to be oblivious to these kinds of activities of their precious daughter, because they would surely not condone this kind of behaviour if they were ever to find out. She looked me up and down and then once more tried to discern what was concealed under my billowing cape. But my elongated, pointy ears were utterly hidden inside – I had made sure earlier, before I left the warm and comfy inn, that not a single wisp of wind would be able to pry open my tight-fitting cap and spread coldness and snow over my shivering head – so there was no chance for her to see if I was right, as she could very probably neither discern the all-black entity of my elvish eyes in the falling darkness and with the heavily falling snowflakes dancing in the air all around, obscuring everybody´s face to nothing more than the most basic blur of colour in a storm of uniform white.  
“I should very much hope not,” I replied. “The elves you know, the elves that live here in town, they are Dark Elves. They come from Morrowind and came here after a huge volcano erupted and destroyed a good many cities and villages where they lived. The Jarl of Windhelm took them in and provided them with a roof over their heads and the warrant to stay in Windhelm. That´s what I heard, at least. I, on the other hand, are Bosmer, a wood elf, hailing from the tropical forests in southern Valenwood. Other than in Morrowind it is always warm there and I never had to bother with that much fur to keep myself from freezing back when I lived there. You see, there´s no snow in Valenwood, so my body isn’t really used to weather like this.”  
“Then, if you neither belong here nor are planning to stay here, what are you doing, out here in the cold? I guess you are hardly braving the wind and weather for the fun of it, are you?”  
I chuckled once more, amused by the witty forwardness of this small but surprisingly well-spoken individual. “Why, aren’t you a curious little thing?”, I said, but she just crossed her arms as if she could will me to reply to her if only she stared at me long and hard enough. Her grey eyes were alert and wary, yet also clearly as curious and strangely excited as they bored into mine and she didn’t budge an inch. “Well, then,” I shrugged and continued. “You´re right. I´m not doing this just for fun. I am waiting for someone.”  
“For whom?”  
“Why do you want to know?”  
“I am a curious little thing, I guess” she shot back, grinning at me mischievously. “Just like you said.” Her eyes sparked as they danced back and forth, the little girl apparently having quite some fun. “So, whom are you waiting for?” She drew her brows close suddenly, as if a quite unexpected thought had suddenly occurred to her. “You are not doing anything illegal, are you? Not trying to rob or even… kill someone? Are you with the Black Brotherhood? Do you belong to the Imperials? You´re not the Butcher, are you?”  
I laughed. “What? No. No, I do not want to kill anyone. And trust me, I am not an Imperial either.”  
“Oh, good,” sighed the little girl and assumed a posture of further relaxation. “Otherwise, I would have had no choice than to rat you out to the city guards, much as I wouldn’t have liked that course of action.” She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. “I´m not really a big fan of the authorities myself.”  
I tried to hide a smile at the thought of a little girl bettering someone like me, if indeed I´d had bad intentions. If I had wanted to kill her, she wouldn’t have made it ten paces, but it warmed my heart to see someone with some fighting spirit in them, especially when it was only a little girl. I winked at the gal and the muscles around my eyes complained as it felt surprisingly much like suddenly moving some very immobile part that should not really have been moved, at least not where my ice-hardened body was concerned.  
“No. No evil intentions whatsoever, I promise. I am just waiting for my partner.”  
“You do realize that this is exactly what a killer would say? What somebody with very, very bad intentions would try to make everyone believe, don’t you?”  
I laughed again, despite the discomfort, my muscles feeling like they were forcefully and quite abruptly jerked awake from a very, very long slumber and were proving recalcitrant to work properly anytime soon.  
“I guess you´re right there, little miss. But in my case I assure you, I am really quite harmless. If I´m honest, I´d much rather be out of the cold as soon as possible than standing here for anytime longer. Just doesn’t agree with me. But my partner and I, we don’t see each other very often. We are both mercenaries and don’t have much time now to spend in Windhelm together before we have to go our separate ways again, and thus we wanted to have dinner together tonight. We agreed to meet here. So, I´m waiting.”  
“Hm. So, where is she?”, asked the little girl and tried to squint through the blizzard all around, as if suddenly there´d appear the one person I´ve been waiting for so wistfully and would magically manifest right next to me.  
“She?”  
“Well, the lady you are so bravely waiting for, of course. For whom you are nobly enduring these kinds of unagreeable conditions. Where is she?”  
I opened my mouth to correct her immediately, getting defensive instinctively as soon as the words had left her tiny round mouth, but then I checked myself. She was only a little girl after all. She wasn’t oblivious on purpose and had meant no harm. Besides, she probably wouldn’t understand anyways. So, “In the palace. Business.” was all I answered instead. “We wanted to meet at dusk.”  
The girl squinted up at the sky which had begun to darken, though if it was because night was finally drawing near or indeed only because of the never dissolving clouds enveloping the city in one of many dire blizzards to come, neither of us could be entirely sure.  
“She´s not standing you up, is she? That would be quite rude, I think, especially when you put up such an effort and stand waiting in the storm for ages. You´d definitely earn my respect for that.”  
That made me smile at her again and I shrugged my shoulders.  
“Well, thank you, little miss. I love to hear that. But I guess it won´t be long now. Though we can really never know how much time the High King needs to pass his orders along, do we? And we can probably also agree on the fact that it wouldn’t be a good idea to bail out on Ulfric just because you have a date, right? So, I guess Ra can indeed be excused for being late.”  
“Wow, she´s with the king? Really? That´s awesome! My dad used to work in the palace as well, you know. What does she do? Is she a Stormcloak? A soldier? Or a mage? Does she work for Galmar and Ulfric?”  
There was excitement and awe in her voice as she spoke of the warriors, but suddenly the amused spark left her dark brown eyes and she looked a lot sadder than a second before, even though she was very good at trying to hide and overplay it. “I loved to visit my father there, when he took me to training sessions or practice rounds.”  
I nodded.  
“Yes, a Stormcloak. And a pretty awesome one at that, I might say. What happened to your father?”  
“What?”, she said, suddenly a lot more defensive, a lot less communicative and friendly. “Nothing. Why?”  
I wondered why that was, what her father could have done to have her react like that. I quickly amended.  
“Apologies, it´s none of my business, really,” I said, “but you said that your father used to work there, and I wondered why that was. Why he stopped. I don’t know many Stormcloaks who have quit. It seems you´re either in, and that for a lifetime, or you´re not even considered fit to join. At least, it was so for me.”  
“He didn’t quit,” the girl said, casting her expressive eyes down and speaking in barely more than a hushed whisper a regular person with regular ears wouldn’t have been able to make out at all. Lucky me, though you couldn’t see them right now, I had exceptionally big and well-trained ears. “He died. Killed during the rebellion in the attack on Whiterun. When he departed for the Hold, he promised he´d take me with him on his next assignment, no matter where they sent him, but he never made it back. He never took me. He just left.”  
“Oh gods, I am so sorry,” I said and crouched low to be eye-to-eye to her.  
I briefly considered taking her in my arms to soothe her, but then thought better and kept my distance. After all, I still was a stranger to her and you did not go about a foreign city, getting too friendly with its underage daughters, no matter the situation. You had to be extra careful these days; someone might see, someone might judge. I expected there to be tears in her big, round eyes, but when she lifted her head and met my glance evenly again, there was only disappointed resignation in her eyes and proud determination tugging around the corners of her delicate mouth. She seemed oddly composed and strangely calm for a girl her age who had lost one of her parents, but I was glad after all, that she did indeed not cry. I had never been particularly good with children of any sort and I wouldn’t have had a single clue as to what to do with her if she should have broken down and wept. Suddenly, I longed for Ralof to be here, to take care of this situation, to do what I couldn’t and make the little girl happy again. He was so good around Frodnar and kids in general, he seemed to always find the right thing to say at any given time and usually, children just loved him.  
“I am sorry,” I repeated again, simply because I couldn’t think of anything else to say to her and took a step back, straightening again. “You and your mother must be so sad.”  
“I don’t have a mother,” said the girl matter-of-factly and without the slightest feeling involved.  
“What do you mean, you don’t have a mother?”, I asked, alarmed. “What happened? Did she die in the war too?”  
The girl shook her head.  
“I don’t know where she is. I´ve never known her. My father never told me anything about her. He would only say that she was gone and none of us would ever be able to get to her again. She must have left when I was still very little. So, I grew up without a mother. Didn’t need one either. It has always ever been only my father and me. And now, I am all by myself, which actually is not half bad neither. At least this way, nobody tells me when to go to bed or forces me to eat some disgusting green things or stuff. It´s quite acceptable, in fact.”  
Suddenly, it all made sense, the situation finally putting itself together before my inner eye. The quipping banter, the frayed and worn clothes that were at least two seasons old and of which she had probably stared to grow out months ago, the ease with which she stood in front of me, as if little girls talking to freezing elves they had never met before in their entire life, was the most natural thing in the world. It made sense now, why anyone would let their daughter wander through a storm like this one, in a city like Whiterun, with dangers like criminals and bandits and cutthroats and worse things by far. It was, because there was simply no one to tell her not to go, to talk sense into her, to protect her, to watch over her, to bring her up. I felt a sudden surge of sadness and pity as I looked at her and thought of the way she had to brave life entirely on her own, had to be her own woman and try to survive in an environment where even older, stronger and wealthier men and women perished every day, gave up, fled.  
“Gods, that is terrible. And you have no one? No family, nobody to take care of you?”  
“Don’t need anyone,” she informed me haughtily. “All I need I can usually get with these.”  
She held out her basket of flowers to me and what I saw therein let my heart lurch and my pity increased. The basket was worn and frayed – as out of date and in want of repair as her dress – and contained a truly sorry bunch of flowers. They doubtlessly had the potential to glow and blossom and shine, but these samples were frozen and wilted and barely any colour or lustre remained. I swallowed and shook my head numbly.  
“Do you at least have somewhere you can stay? To go home to, to be safe, to sleep?”, I asked tonelessly.  
Another brief jerk of her head corroborated my worst fears.  
“Nope, I don’t. It´s not easy as an outlaw or beggar to make the thriftier townsfolk pity just another orphan or homeless girl. They have enough problems of their own, as they always say, and I have learned not to bother them anymore.” The girl shrugged her shoulders and jerked her head again to blink the unruly hair out of her line of sight. “But I do have some things under the arch of the Aretino mansion. Their house was built like a bridge over a street up close to the royal palace. It is always dry under there and even a bit less windy, so I find it quite comfortable to sleep there. Their son Aventus is an orphan too and he sometimes even gives me some leftovers from dinner or stuff he doesn’t need. Many people say he´s evil and bad, but I like him all right. But he never invites anyone into the house.” Her voice grew quieter and soon she was whispering again. “The others all say he´s into dark magic or some such. They say he´ll be trying to lure me into an arcane ritual one day, and is only trying to make me pliant, but I think they´re only jealous or something. Aventus has never done anything to me. Mostly, he just seems to simply ignore me.”  
I raised my eyebrows – skin cracking and muscles screaming – and did not know what to say. Nor what to do or how to act. The way she spoke, it seemed like she was so used to this kind of life, had accepted and resigned to this life as her fate, and didn’t seem all too sad about any of it. I didn’t know if she was only an excellent actor, concerning all of this, or if she was more vulnerable and insecure inside and had just learned to keep this in, to appear staunch and steadfast in order to survive. “Is there nobody to take care of you? To take you in?”, I asked again with ever growing pity. “Is there nobody in this town who could raise you? Who would take pity on you?”  
“I can see now that you have indeed never been to Windhelm for particularly long, mister elf,” said the girl. “If you had, you´d know that people around here are not exactly particularly loving or sympathetic in general, no matter who and what is concerned. They are much too preoccupied to win their bloody revolution to care about a lonely little girl like me.” She paused for a second, then continued, somewhat wistfully. “Of course it would be nice to have something to come home to, to be in a proper family, who doesn’t want that? But I don’t have one now, and as there is no way I can bring my father back from the dead – well, at least no legal way – I figure I´d better not mope about it, right? After all, he has been dead a while now and so far, I do quite fine.”  
“But… then, how do you manage? How can you, how do you cope?”  
“Well, there are my flowers,” she said and indicated the little wicker basket with the lot of fading greenery. “And what these can´t buy me… well, let´s just say I´ve learned to adapt. Everybody has to do what he or she must in order to stay alive, right?”  
“You mean stealing,” I clarified but she just decidedly looked away and started fidgeting from one foot to the other.  
“It´s not much of a life, is it?”, she asked and eventually met my gaze levelly again. “But it´s all I got, so I have to make the best of it, don’t you think?”  
“You really are a quite curious individual,” I repeated, otherwise quite lost for something intelligible to say. She just seemed too grown up, too adult and urbane for a kid her height. It puzzled me deeply.  
“Well, looking at you standing there the way you do, paralysed with cold and waiting for a very unpunctual lover, I could probably say the same about you,” she was quick to return the compliment.  
“True enough,” I said. “How old are you anyways?”  
She looked up at me and smirked, eyes dancing over my puzzled face delightedly, then said challengingly. “Six. How old are you?”  
I bit back a smile. “Well, I am an elf, remember? You´d hardly believe me if I told you.”  
The girl put her arms akimbo and squinted up at me with narrowed eyes, through the billowing flakes of crystalline snow. “Try me.”  
“Two-hundred-and-eighty-three?”  
“You´re right,” she said, eyes still narrowed. “I don’t believe you. Nobody can be that old and look like this. Not even an elf. You´re barely bigger than Aventus, and he´s just sixteen years old. That´s just impossible!”  
“Well, thank you, I guess I´ll take that as a compliment.”  
“So, do you want to buy some flowers now, or not?”  
And just as easy as that, her entire air of confiding intimacy had vanished, vaporized in the swirling gusts of wind and her whole manner changed to something more professional and business-like. She rattled off the names and specific information of every single specimen of the rather sorry lot flowers and greenery she had accumulated in the worn-out looking basket she now thrust under my nose demandingly.  
“I know they are not the best quality any more, but I beg to excuse this unfortunate fact, as with these temperatures most beautiful things tend to freeze and wilt. But maybe you find a particular flower to your liking? And I assure you, with only the littlest skill in magic, even the worst mage could do an invigorating spell that will keep the flowers pretty for at least two to three days.” She looked at me with puppy-dog eyes. “For you, I´m even gonna put them on discount and charge only half of what they´re usually worth. Does that sound fair to you? So, what do you say?”  
“In that case, I´d like to take a closer look and ask how much is a single one?”  
A subtle smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, but she quickly overrode that emotion and her face went back to being straight and blank, devoid of betraying any emotion as to indicate to her opponent that she was trying to pull me over the barrel.  
“A single piece of copper only. I hope that won´t be too much of an inconvenience for you. In your case, I´d furthermore especially recommend a blooming rose or a daffodil for you beloved. Women love to wear flowers in their hair, even here in bleak and unthrifty Windhelm. And if that won´t do the trick, maybe a bunch of colourful mountain flowers for a vase beside her bed? I can provide you with most anything that grows in all of nordic Tamriel. Am plucking them myself, every morning before dawn, on the southern slopes on the other side of the bay.”  
I snickered when I imagined Ralof with a wilted red rose tucked away in the soft blond hair behind his ears and vowed myself to try and make him wear one at some point. It would definitely be a quite unusual but very amusing conversation. Not now, though, as with everything else that was going on in his mind and inside his head, he would certainly not find this kind of immature behaviour very funny. I turned back to the little girl and met her expectant glance.  
“Well, if that is the case,” I said. “I´ll take all of them, if you please.”  
“All… of them?”, echoed the girl. “You mean, as in… the entire bunch of it? Really? Are you serious?”  
“Sure. Couldn’t think of a more romantic gift. Besides, the sooner you get back to your sleeping pallet the better, isn’t it? Little girls shouldn’t be out on the streets after dark. Especially not with everything that´s been going on around here lately. So here,” I said and rummaged around in the pouch safely strapped to my weapons belt, to pull forth three gleaming gold coins. “Take these and go have something warm and healthy to eat tonight. Go to Candlehearth Hall and tell the owner, an elderly lady named Elda, that I have sent you. She´ll provide you with the necessities.”  
“Wow,” she mouthed and I saw her eyes go round as she reached for the money quickly and snatched the coins out of my hand much as Silda had done hours before, but other than her, she did not pocket them immediately. It had probably been a long time since she had seen that much money in one place, if she ever had, let alone possessed anything close to their value. She bit the metal of the first coin and, satisfied that it was genuine, pocketed the currency. The other two, though, were still on her palm and as her eyes darted to and fro between my face, her palm and the wicker basket, she spoke again. “But this is more than double the price for the –“  
“Please,” I said and gently cupped the fingers of her outstretched hand over the coins. “Keep them.”  
“I don’t accept charity. I am able to look out for myself,” she remained adamant. “I cannot take these.”  
“It is no charity if I say that´s exactly what the flowers are worth to me, is it?”, I answered and stepped back, leaving her with the money in her still extended hand.  
“But… but,” she stuttered, too stunned to believe in her luck. “How can you mean that? They´re cold and clammy and frozen! Surely you cannot really want them.”  
“So am I,” I said, spreading my hands and indicating my garments which were slowly but surely beginning to be iced over. “Cold and clammy and pretty thoroughly frozen. Fits perfectly, don’t you think?”  
Finally, she gave up any reluctance and quickly slipped the remaining money into her pouch with a shrug before handing over the sorry bunch of diverse flowers. “Well, thank you. It certainly is nice doing business with you, mister elf.”  
“And with you, little lady,” I responded in kind and inclined my head in the traditional fashion of my kind, used to mark successful trade-offs and seal concluded bargains. The girl started to chuckle. "You´re funny. I kind of like you,” she said and extended her short and childishly disproportional arm. “I am Sofie, by the way.” I shook her hand – warm and soft and utterly untouched by the biting cold – and returned her kind and open smile. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, mister elf.”  
“Haithabu,” I responded. “At your service, little miss Sofie.”  
“Well, Master Haithabu,” said Sofie and clipped her voice in a very professional business manner. “I´d better get going now, if I wanna make sure no beggars take possession of my favourite sleeping spot.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “They tend to get jealous at times, especially when the weather is like this. It sure was a pleasure to meet you, I hope we shall meet again someday, you and I. Thank you for these…,” she continued and held up the coins in her puny little fingers as she slipped them into her pocket cautiously, “… and have a nice remaining evening with your beloved. May the divines bless your kind heart.”  
“Take care,” I mouthed when she turned around again at the bend of the street and waved her stubby hand in farewell one last time, before rounding the corner and disappearing from my view altogether. Utterly speechless and still thoroughly amazed by her, I wasn’t able to move for a very, very long time, let alone keep my thoughts from rotating around a question that crept into my thoughts furtively after Sofie had left, and started to nest in the close confines of my freezing brain with clingy and insistent fingers. It was a serious and grave question, a question I did not yet know and very likely did not actually even want to know the answer to, yet I couldn’t easily get it out of my mind again. It was powerful and insistent and… growing. It was a question that, if it kept developing, if it kept forming ideas and thoughts of its own, could indeed be able change everything.

∞∞∞

Ra showed up finally, only a few minutes later, just when I had decided to move on off the street at long last and find further shelter from wind and weather behind the reeking barrels off to the left. I was glad he did show up right there and then, or I would have had no choice than to run around through town stinking of fish and other, even worse odours for the rest of the evening. And no matter what protection the barrels would have yielded, I would definitely not have liked that. Ra was flushed and red-cheeked when he came into view and seemed slightly out of breath. He must have come down through the snowy streets at a run, skittering to a hurried jog when he caught sight of the frosty and pretty cold snowman waiting for him at the very end of the street, across the plaza in front of the harbour gate, and finally came to a stop in front of is boyfriend who was so thoroughly stiff from the cold by then that I couldn’t even move a single muscle in my face to smile at him in happy appreciation of our reunion.  
“Tabu, I´m sorry,” he panted and kissed me on the cheek swiftly. I was surprised that his lips didn’t stick to the abysmally cold surface of my skin there and then, had already imagined I was so cold, you could not possibly get any colder. But, as ample experience showed, I probably shouldn’t say that, as things are never so bad that they can´t get worse. My teeth chattered and my chin quivered when I greeted him and Ra quickly took me into his arms, bare and warm and without so much as the slightest hint of goose bumps, and started to rub my shoulders, my arms, my aching hands in his for at least a spark of warmth, and we started on our way down the street and immersed very soon into the obscure surroundings of the Dark Elf Quarter and the dingy and somewhat dilapidated and run-down neighbourhood that entailed. It was slightly warmer down here and the wind not as strong by far as further up the cliff – but maybe that was only my imagination playing tricks on the somewhat confused cells of my body, which was finally warming up again from walking and moving its still vociferously protesting limbs, but mostly only due to having the best and most effective hottie by my side, who melted my bones with his warmth like I was sitting with my back against a strongly blazing fire. Ra apologized several times for letting me wait out in the cold like that, without any further notice, but as it was not his own fault that he was indeed almost an hour late, I did not even want to be mad at him. After all, it was not his fault that Ulfric was the arrogant, conceited and paranoid prick into which he had steadily developed these past few years, who thought he could do anything he wanted with his subjects, keep them in his grace for as long as he pleased, and who had absolutely no regard for the time of any of his men and women, was utterly indifferent to the lives they led alongside their service to him. He didn’t care nor was particularly interested in either of that, in whether or not they had better things to do with their lives than wait for him to make up his mind all day long, as long as they did serve him and their reports kept pleasing him. I had no love left for this particular individual – not after the completion of the revolution and the cruelties Ulfric had had committed afterwards, not after I had heard what he had his most loyal and fanatic followers do to the wives and children and everyone, really, that had at some point, somehow been associated with any Imperial in Skyrim. Which, I have to say, was probably close to anyone having spoken to a soldier or courier or workman or trader in the past few decades, ever. Ulfric elegantly called it purging, securing his rule, eradicating resistance. I called it cruel and unnecessary manslaughter. Cold-hearted, fell and just wrong. Ra didn’t say anything, after all Ulfric still pretty much was his immediate boss and without him, he´d be out of his grace and out of a job, but I could feel it bothered him too, caused him to hesitate, sometimes even to reconsider and question, yet he still followed the Stormcloak officer´s commands and did what he was told, same as all the other captains and officers who continued to serve the King loyally.  
I swiped aside Ra´s justifications and explanations and asked him instead to tell me what the important missive had been about and what Galmar and Ulfric wanted from him. He flashed a crooked smile at me and chuckled. “Well,” he said teasingly. “Seems like I am the only one in this country man enough to do their dirty secrets for them.” He hesitated, furrowed his brow. “No, wait, that came out wrong.”  
“Huh, it depends, I guess,” said I. “What dirty secrets did they ask you to do?”  
“They wouldn’t be secrets if I were allowed to tell you about it, would they?”  
“Well, seeing as I am your dirty secret…”  
He caught my black glance with his dark blue one and held it for as long as he needed to slip his hand into mine, to closely interlink and press the fingers of his hand into the back of mine. “Not any longer,” he breathed silently, expressively, emotionally. “Not any more.”  
The stare out of the depths of his fiery eyes finally being too much for me to bear, I looked away, studied the close–leaning, shabby appearance of the buildings all around and took a deep breath. “So,” I said, and tried to steer the conversation back to more familiar turf. “What did they want from you, then? Why did you have to come for them in such a hurry? I hope you don’t have to sort out anyone´s messes again?”  
He snorted but shook his head. There were tiny little snowflakes falling on and clinging to the light strands of his blonde hair, but other than on my head, his snow crystals seemed to melt immediately and vanished only seconds after they struck gold. He was dressed all in chain-mail and official uniform, marking his rank as a captain with three silver stripes around his blue bracers, and the dark indigo cape worn mandatorily by all of Ulfric´s followers billowed behind and all around him in the ever-raging wind, bestowing on him a kind of elegant and noble, almost regal grace. He tipped his head when he spoke, a typical way of his when he told any stories, which now – having seen her act in exactly the same manner – reminded me immensely of his elder sister Gerdur. The street was lit only at intervals by strong, vibrant stormlights that looked like torches, yet were exclusively powered by magic from the city´s mages and the court wizard, providing specks of brightness and light here and there, just enough to make visible the path nightly wanderers like the two of us needed in order to see where they were stepping. The sparse lighting illuminated him sometimes from the side, sometimes from the very front and sometimes from behind, playing with light and shadow on the steep angles of his comely face as he told me of his new commission, of the things Ulfric needed done asap and could only assign someone very high up on the chain of command with, lest the word spread, and the highly precarious mission was endangered.  
“So, they really brought you in once again to save the day,” I assessed when his account finally drew to a close. “Whatever would Galmar do without you. He wouldn’t know whether he´s coming or going. You truly must be one of the main pillars this empire stands on.” I raised myself on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, whispering into his ear softly. “I´m so proud of you, darling.”  
“Thank you. But then, I don’t suppose either of them can be expected to –,“ Ralof stopped in the middle of his sentence and cocked his head, looking at me curiously. I had ceased walking, tensed all over and was staring into the shadows intently, convinced and terrified at the same time that I had just caught a glimpse of her again. Her. The flower girl. Sofie. “Tabu, what is it? You look like you have something very serious on your mind. I´ve been thinking that since the second I saw you. You don’t seem your usual self tonight. What is it, has something happened? Can you tell me?”  
“She shouldn’t be here,” I said, not giving particular heed to his words, nor to his confused “Who?” just continued to watch the shadows all around warily. I knew I shouldn’t bother, shouldn’t care, but yet… this strange girl had left quite the impression on me, and I already felt uncommonly protective about her. The dangers of the night just were no place for little girls such as her. No matter how capable or grown-up she might seem. I shrugged my shoulders, unable as of yet to communicate this strange feeling I had about Sofie and struggling to put our truly uncommon encounter into actual words when I finally gave up and we started moving again. “I don’t know. It´s nothing bad, really, I just met the most curious person, earlier, and I don’t know what to make of her,” I said, and though I felt he seemed genuinely interested, he did not press the matter when I didn’t go on on my own. “And now I just thought I saw her again, watching from the shadows… Oh, which reminds me,” I continued distractedly, as I recalled something I had wanted to give him all this time, something I had saved up for him especially. I started rummaging in my pockets and he kept regarding me with raised eyebrows and an affectionate soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. I finally found what I was looking for and pulled forth the bunch of frozen, yet still surprisingly colourful batch of intricate flowers I had formerly purchased from Sofie, and held them out to him in a shivering hand. “These are for you, darling.”  
“Oh… well, thank you,” said Ra good-humouredly and took hold of the withered greenery hesitantly. “It´s not your most romantic gift ever, but it´s the thought that counts, isn’t it? After all, who wouldn’t want to get a bunch of wilted, faded flowers as a token of your lover´s affection? Thanks, Tabu.”  
“Well, if you truly want to learn the thought behind it,” I smiled playfully and bumped my shoulder into his while walking. “It´s even less romantic than you think. I didn’t even have you in mind when I bought them.”  
“Oh really?”, he said, raising his eyebrows again. “Well, good to know. Was it the curious little person you met, that kept your imagination busy?”  
“Possibly,” I said and shrugged. “Though not in the way you may probably think. It´s not what it looks like.”  
“Most conversations that start like this don’t tend to take a particularly good turn of events, Tabu. Is there something you wanna tell me?”  
“Well, I promise you, there´s nothing for you to worry about. I´ll tell you during dinner, okay? It´s really a most curious story – and also maybe the saddest and most emotional one I´ve ever heard on top of it – and I´d like to hear your opinion about it.”  
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “Okay. Sure. Tell me whenever you see fit. You´ve made me thoroughly curious now.” With that, I interlinked our arms and we walked the rest of the way to our destination in comfortable silence.  
The New Gnisis Club was possibly the only brightly lit building in the entire and otherwise quite desolate quarter and only when we turned the corner and came out into the little yard in front of it, where bold customers were courageously braving wind and weather to go and get some fresh air or smoke their pipes or mingle in soft and susurrating conversation, did we see the first living souls in the entire area. There were about a dozen individuals out front when we came closer, and I felt Ralof tense ever so minutely, the expression in his eyes growing just a little bit harder, his gait getting just a fraction crisper, his mouth just a little straighter, but he didn’t pull back, didn’t distance himself from me or voice his sudden uncertainty, just kept going, kept making for the restaurant decisively.  
Neither of the guys (and only very, very little of the present women, which weren’t all that many to begin with) out on the street or in the yard even chanced a second look at us though, and we passed through them completely free and unhindered, unbothered and unobtrusive, still holding hands, my eyes going wide in wonder. Nobody held us up, nobody insulted or abused us and nobody tried to arrest us. They treated us naturally and like anyone else, like we were just some regular couple on a regular business day. And maybe we were, I thought, the idea in itself filling me equally with thrill and a sudden sense of discomfort, when I remembered the Grey Quarter´s reputation for everything and anything criminal or obscure that could ever happen doubtlessly going on behind some window or some door in this immediate vicinity. People talked about the sort of people meeting and doing business here, and it was almost always quite the pejorative and disparaging talk. It is not safe down there, they told people in the palace. You should not go there, said the merchants in the markets. I remembered Zulu telling about the drug-using junkies gathering in the blackest streets of the Grey Quarter and of the poor and homeless dark elves robbing and raping any woman who was brave or stupid enough to venture outside after the fall of dark, and I looked all around to discover where all of these folks might hide. But the people clustering outside the Club looked dapper and like proper gentlemen with their respective ladies all right, but the worst criminals are the ones in the best disguise – that´s at least what my old mentor back in Cyrodiil always used to say anyways – so it was definitely possible that two men holding hands was not the most astonishing or unthinkable thing that would happen here tonight, not by far the strangest thing that they had seen in their lives. A small and slender figure with a greyish tinge to his skin, pointy ears and sparkling, all red eyes, who looked like an especially little boy to all but the most observant eyes, but was by the looks of it a grown up dark elf nobody could guess the true age of just by looking at him, even winked at me quite wolfishly from off to the side of the yard where he squatted on a low-hanging eave of one of the adjoining buildings, legs dangling through empty air at least ten feet above street level, just as we were crossing the open space on our way towards the entrance. When I didn’t quite know how to react in my surprise but couldn’t look away either, he grinned broadly, white teeth flashing blindingly against the dark colour of his skin, and averted his eyes coyly. Ralof didn’t notice – too intent on getting in there and starting on the infamous pie he seemed pretty eager to quench his hunger and frustration about Ulfric with – and I returned the elf´s little smile awkwardly.  
The doorman was an elderly elf who towered even over Ralof (which had never happened before, in my experience, as he was pretty big already even for a Nord), their conjoined heights making me feel like nothing more than a mere boy in comparison. When we walked up towards the door he frowned at Ralof disapprovingly – who was clothed in full rebellious livery – asked him for a proof of identity and wanted to know what business a Stormcloak officer could possibly have in these parts of town, at this time of the night. He relaxed instantly when both of us assured him that neither of us were on duty and just wanted to spend a quiet evening in nice and friendly surroundings, eat and drink and be left in peace, and certainly meant no harm. Ralof gave his name and unit and both of us handed over our weapons (well, at least the ones that were plainly visible to the elderly porter), there was a strict no-weapons policy inside as he told us, and then he gestured warmly for us to enter, get comfortable and enjoy the evening. He even managed an almost imperceptible tug to both corners of his mouth which may or may not have hinted at a smile. I was starting to feel rather comfortable and at ease and instinctively decided to take an immediate liking to the place.  
There was a quartet in one corner of the downstairs public parlour playing some unobtrusively merry sonnet and though the interior looked neither old nor particularly used, there was just a very… classy and fashionable connotation to all of it. After the door had fallen shut in our backs, we were warmly welcomed by a scrawny waiter dressed all in black, with grey skin and pointy ears and long and glossy black hair that even as a braid reached almost all the way down to the hollow of his knees. He led us upstairs and showed us to a cosy and comfortable little table for two on the first floor with a view across the entire and quite huge room where almost all other tables seemed to be taken already – the majority of guests seemed to be both elvish and male, but none of these took particular interest in either of us and there was not a single one I could discern who looked at us even remotely askant. They just looked over, appreciated our presence amongst them with barely more than an imperceptible nod and turned back to their respective conversations, minding their own businesses. My esteem and liking for the place increased even further.  
Ra and I settled in and both relaxed, starting to feel like we may have found ourselves a favourite hangout at long last, and when the classy waiter brought our orders after a little while and presented us with a complimentary glass of wine for each of us on top of it, Ra started to dig into his portion of pie with relish and glee immediately – afterwards even finishing off the rest of what I had left over from my own huge portion – and I took a deep breath and launched into the story about my unusual encounter and conversation from earlier, about what she had told me of herself and about what I had learned from her in subtext, and about why what had happened had happened in her life, in short, I told him everything there was, everything I remembered of Sofie. 

∞∞∞

“Gosh,” laughed Ra loudly and uninhibitedly, and his voice carried far through the still and white streets of snowy Windhelm. “Really? I mean I always knew you were a nerd, but I´d never have thought you were quite that geeky.”  
It was way past dark now, and the terrible snowstorm had abated and stopped at long last and walking through the pristine snow piled in thick drifts and bunches on the streets felt like strolling through a true winter wonderland, a paradise of glossy, sparkling, brightly lit ice crystals all around. The world was silent and completely still around us, even though the snow carried all sound farther and further than it usually ventured. And even though it was not that late yet, the two of us were entirely alone on the streets, we hadn’t set eyes on a single soul since leaving the New Gnisis Club behind and setting out for the cold but refreshing walk through the snowed-up city, back up to the more habitable districts, back up towards our inn and the soft and cuddly warm bed that was awaiting us there, a nirvana for our tired bones. Our breaths were fogging in cold swathes of air whenever we exhaled, the tip of my nose felt strangely otherworldly and remote and was probably as red as a beet and my feet were so cold I couldn’t feel them any more, yet, I was strangely comfortable, felt at peace and entirely unbothered by all of this; I was happy.  
Ra was still laughing at the recollection of my first winter, as he stumbled through a huge pile of snow and ploughed along the path with childlike joy, taking delight in the way I smiled at him, at how perfect this date had developed, at the inanely good time we had had at the Club, at the way the nature could create wonders like this – purely white and unblemished by anything or anyone – time and again, that something so beautiful and undefiled could come out of a dire and violent storm like the one before. Eventually, Ra came staggering back to my side in a wide circle and buffed my shoulder, still grinning wildly.  
“This has to be the funniest story I´ve ever heard by far. I´m just now trying to picture baby elf Haithabu experiencing his first snow wondering why it was all wet and cold. It must truly have been hilarious. I wish I could have seen the disappointed expression on your face. So, what did you do?”, he asked, his face scrunched up in anticipating amusement.  
“I vowed to myself never to trust beautiful things ever again, not in my entire life,” I answered. “And I didn’t. My brothers laughed at me, but I managed quite fine. Well, at least until you came along...” I breathed deeply and allowed myself to relish in the affection this man made me feel for him, in the love and utter ease I felt whenever I was around him, and the wonder this still caused me at times. After all, I should have known him good enough by now, shouldn’t have been surprised by the sheer cute adorableness exuding off him when he thought we couldn’t be watched, when he started at long last to truly come out of his shell and just to enjoy his life. But yet, even after being with him for the amount of time I have, there never went by one day with Ralof in which he did not surprise me, in which he did not astonish me, in which he did not make me laugh. It just was like this with him, I thought, my life much more in balance and I myself much more level-headed and well-tempered when he was with me than when we were apart. It should probably not surprise me at all any more, yet here I was again, looking up into his softly glowing, blackish-blue eyes under the light of the moon and stars and the intermittent bluish stormlight, and I felt a sudden surge of immense love, protectiveness and of longing, that it nearly overwhelmed me.  
I swallowed and stopped, taking his hand in mine without saying anything else, and he took hold of it and slowly started to steer me off the road. One hand in mine, the other gently on my hipbone, he retreated backwards until my back hit the solid stone wall of one of the towering houses and arrested our further advance off the street. We had moved into a small, narrow and even darker side street and Ralof´s body pressed down on mine demandingly, hungrily. He tilted my head up and I met his eyes briefly, before he put his lips down on mine and began kissing my breath away. He moved with firm preciseness, yet also with a tender care and the sort of ginger prudence that was so typical for him, that I had come to associate with him, always so afraid to hurt anyone around him, always cautious about everything, always wary about his surroundings. The wall of stones was cold behind my back and under the tips of my fingers, but Ra on the other hand was warm and pleasurably animated in front of me – against me – and I wrapped my arms around his shoulder and warmed my hands, my arms, my body, my soul in the heat coming off him and felt utterly at ease as I allowed myself to forget the world under his touch.  
Thoroughly breathless and with a sort of exciting warmth and fire coursing around inside of me, which I had missed most of the rest of the uncomfortably cold day, we broke apart finally and I leaned back my head languidly against the stones of the building, eyes half closed, both of Ra´s hands still on my face, fingers tangled in my hair, caressing gently. It was a mess by now, but then, who cared. As long as it was Ra messing it up, he was welcome to do any and everything he wanted with me. He smiled his crooked smile, halfway coy and halfway shy, and I tugged him closer again by placing both hands on his belt, around his hips.  
“Wow, you´ve really come a long way,” I said quietly. “What was this about?”  
Ra leered at me playfully. “Did you like it?”  
“Did I like kissing you? Do I like seeing you like this? Do I like seeing you happy? Do I like the way you seem to gain confidence with every minute that passes, how that gives me more confidence in turn, the longer we are together? Do I like loving you?”  
Ra chuckled. “I´m gonna go take a risk here, and say… yes?”  
“Damn yes indeed,” I imitated the nordic way of talking and laughed.  
“So… wanna continue?”, asked Ra in a husky voice and stole another hot set of exciting kisses. I gave myself up into his tender care completely, breathing deeply, loving fiercely, surprised by his forwardness, amazed by Ralof taking the lead for once. It was not an unpleasant feeling at all, if an uncommon one, and I felt utterly cared for and protected inside his arms, pressed against the hard wall of stones behind my back, so easy and so good that I just closed my eyes and savoured all the feelings.  
“Where have you learned to do that?”, I gasped when he paused a second time to catch his breath.  
“Well,” allowed Ra, “I heard some of the guys talking about… you know… things like this, and I thought, well… I could give it a try. It was worth it, wasn’t it?”  
“Definitely,” I nodded eagerly, hooking my index finger through the belt holding his chainmail together, playing with the latch distractedly. It was utterly quiet for some time, so quiet even that I could hear the city breathe underneath the obscuring, silencing snow.  
“I don’t want to leave, Ra,” I said, suddenly serious again. “I don’t want to go to Solitude, don’t want to have to leave you behind and not see you again for ages, for what feels like much too long a time. Every time it feels agonizingly like I am parted from my better half. It will be weeks before we see each other again, months maybe, and I don’t think I can take that right now. Not now, not when I feel like we are finally making a difference, when we are finally learning how to cope with the world, when we are just now learning what it means to be proud of what we are, what we feel. I don’t want to let that go. I don’t want to leave you here. I don’t want to have to go.”  
“Solitude´s beautiful,” Ra pointed out, not particularly helpful.  
“Of course it is,” I said. “It´s the most beautiful city in all of Skyrim. But it´s so far. So far away. From you. And these days, nothing is beautiful anywhere without you.” Ra made a noise somewhere in between a laugh and a huff, apparently not sure if I was being honest or merely messing with him. He averted his eyes and looked out towards the main street, although he did not pull back and kept his face close to mine. “Ra, I meant what I said,” I clarified and drew in a long, deep breath even though the coldness of the air seemed to turn my insides to ice as soon as I had sucked the cold jet into my lungs, freezing me all over for a moment. “I don’t want to be parted from you so soon. Not after we barely had any time together to really catch up, to truly spend some alone-time together, without anyone constantly wanting something from either of us.”  
Ra chuckled and his eyes radiated amusement. “Who are you and what have you done to my boyfriend?”, he asked, good-naturedly. “It is usually my job to be the more sentimental of the two of us, isn’t it? Since when have you gone all emotional and sensitive?”  
I shrugged helplessly, not raising to the promise of shallow banter, clutching at my man even tighter. I had indeed not planned this to turn out quite as whiny, quite as emotional, quite as puny as it sounded to my own ears now, but there it was, out in the open, and I wanted to make him see, make him understand. I was ready for something more serious and I felt like now was as good a time as any to try to tell him. “I don’t know, Ra,” I said, desperately trying to find the right words, desperate for once to try to be as open and utterly honest about my emotions and sentiments the way he always was in return. I loved this side of him, loved that he talked to me about what was going on deep inside of him often and whenever something made him uncomfortable, but it was not a character trait I could say I shared, and therefore it came far from natural to me. Also, and probably especially since I have spent over two hundred years of my life trying to hide them, trying to hide my feelings and sensations and trying to bottle them up, stowing them away for nobody ever to find out. Ra had definitely broken that dam, had changed something inside of me irreversibly, and I longed to get in touch with this other and very new side of me, to confide in and entrust another person with everything I longed to talk about, with everything every new day shared with me, everything that was going on with and for me. Ra was such a person at long last, and I was ready to open up for him, ready to let him see my soul, a thing I hadn’t shown to anyone else since my early days in Cyrodiil. Since then, I had had to keep it hidden, keep it in, lest someone else learned what exactly it was that I was mourning.  
“You have been so frank with me these past few days,” I continued solemnly. “You were honest and true and utterly open with both your feelings and your hopes and dreams, with everything in truth. You can talk about your emotions and fears so passionate and vulnerably intimate at the same time, and I admire that, I really do. It´s something I never really could, before. And I admire how you made this decision, even though I know it came far from natural to you and must have felt close to the most uncomfortable thing you ever did in your life. Yet, you made the best out of it and saw it through – are still seeing it through, actually, even right now – and I know you did it, all of it, for me. Because of me. You have my deepest respect for that and as I know it was as hard for you as hell, I wanted to give you something in return. You are always so honest with me, so you deserve that I am honest with you too. I wanted to thank you, Ra. I wanted to thank you for these whole two years where you´ve shown me what love truly means, and I fear I do not say it often enough, but I love you. I love you and I could never imagine to ever be without you again. I love you, more than anything else in this world. I love you so much that I don’t want to leave you again. I want to stay, with you, forever.” I stopped, lump in my throat, voice catchy and hushed, yet for once it did not feel uncomfortable or undesirable, but good and relieving to finally having said it, to finally having made him see.  
“Tabu…” Ra lowered his head slowly until our foreheads touched and whispered when he spoke next. For once, he seemed to be the one lost for words. “Then, don’t go. Just… stay.”  
“I wish it were that easy,” I sighed, resting my forehead against his. “But it´s not. You know that it´s not.”  
“Why not?”  
“Because. I have… obligations,” I answered. “A job. A profession that doesn’t allow any leisure, that doesn’t allow hesitation. I have promised Zulu. He expects me to help him. It wouldn’t be fair to bail on him. Not if so much depends on it.”  
“Then we´ll just tell him. He´ll understand, I know Zulu. He won´t be happy but he´ll manage. He´s a good guy.”  
“Which is why I want to help him in the first place. Which is the only reason I agreed to do this for him, to go with him tomorrow in the first place.” I sighed and shifted my weight ever so slightly, so that I could just rest my head on his shoulder. “But I don’t want to go. I wish I could just stop it all, could rescind from these duties, could just be entirely free to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, be free at long last to choose you, and only you.”  
His eyes suddenly darkened a shade and he looked at me with a truly unusual expression, something I had never seen on him before. It was strangely new, but I was not sure yet how he would respond, how he would react to what I was trying to tell him. He reached forward to carefully tuck an escaped strand of hair back behind my elongated ear and I shuddered in unrepressed longing as the tips of his fingers brushed and lingered along the tip. His lips were cool but not cold on the skin at the base of my chin and his thumb slowly traced the path of the almost invisible little scar on my cheek, right up to the point where it disappeared beneath the hairline.  
“There´s a way we could make it work,” he whispered slowly. “A way we –“  
He broke off in the middle of the sentence and straightened up abruptly. Hands went to weapons, minds went to battle, and I crouched low in anticipation of an immediate assault, yet needed a second to realize what had kicked both our warrior´s instincts off and what had unconsciously made me reach for my bow where it was strapped on to my back and pull forth an arrow that was by now already lying on the string, notched and ready to be shot. It had been disconcerting, loud and so close. Just then, I heard it again, much louder, much closer, and I pricked my ears, grimacing. Yet another blood-curdling scream. It was high and pitchy and dreadful and full of real and overwhelming terror. It sounded as if heralding a fight for life and death. The rather high characteristics of it indicated a woman, and a young one at that and, what was worse: It sounded like a voice I knew, like the voice of someone I had only just talked to, no three hours ago.  
“Ra, what the hell…,” I started, but when I had gathered my wits and turned to face my Stormcloak all that was left to see was his sexy backside sprinting away and a billowing cape wildly fluttering behind him as he made for the source of the sound at a hectic run, drawing and brandishing his sword on the way.  
I quickly collected myself and took off after him, racing on my partner´s heels through the dark, uneven and twisted streets of the beginnings of something called the Stone Quarter. Lucky me, I raced with a child of this very city, somebody who had spent many years getting a grip on the twisting and stony streets that still confused me at times, and Ra had absolutely no trouble finding his way, apparently knowing exactly where he was going from the very start. He stormed up a flight of stairs here, along a narrow alleyway there, and through a stony and askew archway in a sort of claustrophobic shortcut. We soon emerged into a wider main road again and there, right in the middle of it, in plain sight of a lantern and two glowing stormlights, we saw it, saw her. A bloody mess on the floor, much too much blood in the snow and on the earth all around, and the handle of a long and thin dagger protruding right from the middle of a broken body.  
It was Sadri, lying pale and motionless in the street, eyes wide open and erring about in shocked confusion, a quickly spreading pool of dark red blood growing around her in a circle, steaming in swathes where it met the cold of the white snow all around. Ra made for the wounded immediately, without hesitation, without chancing a look to either side at what could still be lurking in the shadows, and so it fell to me to look for remnants of the attackers – or the attacker, as it rather looked like to me – it was my job now to make sure nobody was still in hiding somewhere close, to secure our backs. I glimpsed just the darkest of impressions of a human-like shape disappearing along the other side of the road into the darkness of night-time Windhelm and cursed at myself for not notching and shooting immediately. Now, the attacker was gone and I could not just go and shoot off into the dark volatilely, for fear of hurting someone innocent, especially not in a crowded city like this one where other inhabitants had woken and were just now curiously emerging from their houses and venturing out into the cold to see what was causing such a ruckus that late in the evening, what could possibly have happened now.  
“Ra,” I called insistently as I closed the distance and slowed to only a jog as soon as I came near to where his massive form was crouching beside the delicate and fine-boned body of the woman. Sadri looked more dead than alive, and I was in no doubt that she couldn’t be saved, that it was already too late, that her death was all but sealed. Her lips were blue and bloody and her hands, or what I could see of them through the fur-lined gown covering most of her body, were white as the omnipresent snow all around. That didn’t mean, though, that Ralof did not try anyways. He had dropped his sword while still running to the elfin´s side – it lay abandoned and forgotten only a few feet away now – and was bent low over Sadri´s failing body to identify the worst wounds. He had pulled the blade of the bloody dagger free and one hand was already pressed tightly against the biggest gash it had inflicted, where it had slipped in between two wide-spread ribs and hurt the fragile insides just below her breast, where the blood pumped out her remaining life with every breath, with every heartbeat, with every up and down of her ribcage, every second bringing her closer to the brink of oblivion. Already, the front of Ra´s shirt was drenched in dark red blood, his hand looked like he had dipped it in a pot of crimson paint and Sadri could not hope to stay conscious for much longer. Her body spasmed and protested, she tried to move her lips, tried to move her hands, her body, tried to say something, anything, maybe tell us about what had happened, about who had attacked her, why she had been out after dark at all, but nothing came, nothing other than a wet gurgle and ever more puddles of blood from deep within, which she coughed up and out across her lips in irregular convulsions. Her mismatched eyes – usually all red and sparkling which was typical for dark elves like her – had lost their intensity and were now barely more than a dull brown, the sockets sunk deep into her skull, and the skin of her face looked blackish blue where the blood had already deserted her nimble frame.  
I looked on, insecure, indecisive, torn between my want to crouch down beside my selfless lover and try to help him save Sadri, who had so violently been attacked and didn’t deserve any of this crap, and between the overwhelming desire to finally catch who was doing all this to innocent young women like her, to catch the trail of the ruthless murderer and stop the butcher once and for all. Who, with every second that passed, got farther away, diminishing my chances to find him again, to follow him to wherever he ran off to, about to get away, about to escape justice. The bow in my hand seemed to burn insistently, screaming at me to stop hesitating, to stop lingering, to take action and do something. Yet, I stood frozen in shock, riveted to the spot by the sight of Ra trying to stop the flow of blood, by Sadri trying to get up, trying to claw at her wounds with fleeing strength and vigour, by the fact that only a minute ago I would never have thought events could turn in this kind of direction, when I had been so close to saying the words, when I had just been about to tell him, riveted to the spot by the absurdity of it all.  
“Ra,” I said again, feebly, the single syllable alone giving me back part of my strength, even though I still couldn’t decide, still didn’t know what to do. He had cut and torn part of his fleece cape into smaller scraps and was pressing one to the enormous gash in Sadri´s side, was whispering hurriedly to her while he was at it, trying to calm her and ease her pain much as he tried to calm himself at the same time, and dabbing at another wound – shallower and more superficial – close to her shoulder with the other hand.  
“Ra,” I said one last time and he finally looked up at me – albeit only briefly – and met my eyes with a scampered look on his face.  
He seemed to know immediately what I was thinking, must have seen the nightly attacker after all, or otherwise read my thoughts, must have known exactly what was going on in my mind, because now he just nodded his head once and said “Go. Get him.” before turning down towards his protégé again and increasing the pressure on Sadri´s struggling body. She gasped and whimpered, squirmed and moaned, but it seemed like the stream of blood was finally getting lesser, the flow of blood eventually waning. There was a slow trickle of people appearing from houses and mansions all around now, the first screaming for a doctor, the second handful running off towards the palace to fetch the court magician and some guards, some more finally squatting down besides the Stormcloak captain and following his instructions as to how to see to Sadris wounds and how to help him keep her alive until a professional arrived. Ra looked up again and frowned in irritation when he found me still standing rooted to the spot.  
“I´ll stay with her. You go, Tabu. Kill him! Make him pay.” I didn’t need more than that and eventually, without any further word, I took off at a sprint.

∞∞∞

The killer was fast. Faster than a wolf on the hunt, faster than deer in wild flight, faster than swallows racing through the sky. But I was running too, running as hard as I could, as hard as my condition and my feet allowed, I was pumped up on adrenaline, high on the rush of blood that always came with it, and I was angry. Angry about what this guy had done to Sadri, what harm and woe he has brought on to all these other, young and lovely women. Angry about the insolence of him just taking lives like that, as if they weren´t something precious and rare, something to be worshipped and taken care of with the uttermost devotion, something to be protected and appreciated accordingly. It was as if he was playing god and didn’t care about what his insatiable desires and twisted practices left behind. I was angry about him because of that and so much more. I was angry that his murder had interrupted a marvellous evening, that he had disrupted the conversation Ra and I had just had beneath the moon and the stars and what may have come out of it. I was angry at him for having interrupted our moment, for terrifying an entire town, for murdering on nothing more than a whim. Angry at him, angry at the world, angry at everything. My bow seemed to glow in my hand and I longed for nothing more than to see the deformed shape in a dark cape in front of me again, to pick him as a target, to draw, notch and let fly all anger and pent up rage in less than a single breath, to finally exude justice, to finally make him pay. My anger was giving me strength, giving me endurance and stamina, spurring me on. And, it was hot enough, so that I was finally even starting to gain on the Butcher!  
At first, I had merely been following the trail of his elongated footsteps where they had left their marks in the pristine snow, for once not cursing the cold and wet mess that was falling from the nordic skies more often than not, which was now a unique sort of tracing map for me and my darting eyes, enabling me to track the monster down, to step where he has stepped, to tell me where he had passed. The imprints in the snow spoke of very large feet – or at least large shoes, but one only tended to wear these if the feet had a matching size – which told me two things. First, the person I followed had to be a man. Second, I was pretty sure it was a nordic one on top of it, and he was running as fast as his legs would carry him. Which, with legs as long as these was a hell of a lot faster than I´d hoped for. I spurred myself on and despite the smiting oppression of the omnipresent tightness of the masonry all around, I managed to step it up a notch myself. I just had to find this guy, I could never let him get away with this. I benefited now from the fact that it was in the middle of the night and practically nobody was moving around on the streets any more, no staring citizen got in my way, no curious onlooker hindered my path, no other inhabitants moved around to obscure and swallow up the footprints the murderer left in the snow, there was only one trail in front of me, and I followed it as if my own life depended on it.  
I was steadily closing the gap, and after a while I was even able to catch sight of the guy every time I rounded a corner and he disappeared about another just as I readied my bow to take him down. He never once turned or looked back, but either he knew I was behind him and more often than not just about to shoot, or else it was a time-tested security measure of his, to sidestep any followers like this, but I chased him through the nightly streets of Windhelm for much longer than I´d have wanted to, unable to have a few seconds of straight running to draw, aim and fire the deadly bolt into his back. He darted to and fro like a hare in uncoordinated flight from a hunter in an open field, and I wondered when exactly this one was about to reach his barrow, where he was headed to, and if I´d be able to follow him inside. Just then, the murderer raced past Candlehearth Hall and the access stairs ascending towards the royal palace on its little hill – no palace guards anywhere in sight, to which I could have called out and ordered help – and on towards the Hall of the Dead, through the gates of the old cemetery and thereby across the threshold to the royal quarter.  
If Windhelm in general gave a wood-elf like me the creeps, what with all the heavy stones and the disconcerting sense of mighty gravity these big, bulky, man-made structures all around seemed to invoke, the ancient graveyard sure came close to parts of the city I felt the least comfortable in, doubling my all-encompassing discomfort tenfold at the very least. All the old, towering, hunched over and sorry-looking headstones for a sheer immense amount of unhappy dead that had died in this bleak and unlucky city many centuries ago, all of them lying motionless and rotten in their shallow graves, staring up at me through many feet of earth and grave-dust with empty, unseeing eyes, sent new shivers of goose bumps up and down my spine every time I ventured too close to this unholy place. It was next to the market and could serve as a time-saving shortcut between the Jarl´s palace and the vendor-stalls in town, but whenever my way led from one to another, I could never persuade myself to go through there. It was a creepy, dismal and dangerous place, even in the light and questionable merriment of day, but now, at night, and with nobody but a ruthless murderer and the memory of the twisted corpses he left behind for company, the feeling that suddenly engulfed me was enough to make me stop in my tracks just under the sweeping arch of the gate in which the name and purpose of this site was by all probability carved into the centuries-old stones, but it was in old Nordic, so I was not able to read or decipher the runes. I slithered to a stop at the threshold to uncanniness and growled under my breath. It was as if he´d known, as if he´d flown here on purpose, as if he´d anticipated I didn’t want to – I just couldn’t make myself – follow him in there. I breathed heavily from the frantic chase and stood under the sloping arch on the top step of the small staircase leading down into the – hopefully purely metaphorical – realm of the dead, quarrelling with myself and my conscience about what I´d have to do next.  
You can´t go in there, it´s too oppressing, too dangerous, seemed to whisper my heart, my soul, my every instinct. It´s tight and close and the stone walls on either side are thicker than you are long. You won´t be able to breathe in this pit. You will feel all the ages, all the clinging stories of the dead and deceased weigh you down. Don’t go down there…  
I nodded, as if in agreement to this voice of reason, while I saw the black cape and the hunched form of the villain recede into the hazy distance with every second I hesitated. I bit my lip hard when I heard Ra´s voice speaking up in the back of my head, voice level and even, like he so often talked, taking hold over my mind and my sense of duty, invoking law and justice. Go. Get him, he had said. Kill him! Make him pay. It was the expression that would show on Ra´s face if I returned to him empty handed, if I told him I´d been too afraid and weak to do what had to be done and came back without having exuded justice, that kept flashing behind my inner eye. He wouldn’t blame me, I knew that, he wouldn’t say anything at all, just whisper that it was okay, that he understood, but he would be disappointed all the same, would secretly feel let down and betrayed. And that after seeing him crouch beside a dying woman so selflessly and trying everything in his power to save her, to heal her, to make her better. No, I thought with returning power of will and fighting spirit, no, I just could not let that happen. Not today, not to my Ralof!  
I breathed deeply a few times – my instincts still protesting quite vociferously, but for now I chose to ignore them – and took a step forward. My vision seemed to zero in and it got just a fraction harder to breathe as I started down the stairs, but I forced my panic down and concentrated on the matter at hand. I had to follow the butcher, I had to stop him, and I had to kill him. With this in mind, it got easier to take up running again and I gripped my bow tight as I bounded over and across and around and along ancient graves, headstones of antique burial sites and mausoleums alike and took up the trail of the despicable fleeing hare again, trying not to think of the bones, the tendons, the sinew and the flesh I was stepping on every second, I was walking on like when death passed across a deserted battlefield. The cemetery was huge – compared to the size of the rest of the town, anyways – and except for the skewered, wind-bitten and storm-ridden headstones, relatively open ground. There were no trees, no houses no walls to hide or cower behind, and I quickly recognized my advantage. The butcher seemed to realize his mistake only after I had notched and let fly the first of my arrows in a straight line, crossing at least twenty-five of the broken stones and flying over much more broken bodies decaying in the earth, before the forceful missile buried itself deep in the back of his calf. I could have killed him with a shot clear to the head with barely any more effort at all – after all, what difference did it make to the arrow – but I wanted to see him fall first, wanted him to know he had been followed and found out, and was now about to be exerted justice upon. And by Mara, it was a sweet feeling indeed. Especially after he had caused so much harm, had done so much wrong in his life. Furthermore, I wanted to chance a look under his big and shrouded cowl, to have an idea of who it was who could do such cruel things and why, and I wanted to find out if I maybe even knew him, if only by sight. Then, as I would arch my arm up for the killing blow with the tip of my bow – which was sharpened and reinforced with dragonscale claws at both ends and could hence be perfectly used as a sword or a spear-like stabbing contraption – I would see the light go out in his eyes and the world would be made just a little bit better again.  
Apparently, though, I had counted my chicken before they were hatched, for the fleeing outlaw did indeed stumble and slow as the arrow pierced his shin and made it even halfway out on the other side of his leg, but he did not fall down and he did not cry out. Instead, he raised both his arms above his head and while his left hand sent a sparkling and utterly unexpected jet of sharpened ice-missiles roughly in my direction, which I could barely dodge in time by throwing myself face-first behind the closest gravestone, the other hand started to glow orange and soon had his entire body enveloped in the divine light typical for the most common of healing spells. The arrow was encouraged to dislodge itself from his leg and the wound quickly healed over as the magic glowed all around it, knitting his skin tissue back together.  
“Magician,” I swore under my breath, cursing myself for not having thought of it, for not being prepared for it. “Damn it.” I should have known… It would make everything so much more complicated.  
His bullets shattered deafeningly loud against the stone in front of me – or at least it sounded like that to my ears, like a powerful hammer trying to disassemble a frozen solid ice-sculpture that sure had to wake up half the town, but either the sound didn’t carry or my mind exaggerated the noise, cause nobody showed – and when I rolled back up to my feet and leaned on the solid granite slab for only a second to right myself, the entire headstone crumbled and caved in in front my feet in a sorry heap of pulverized material. The other graves seemed suddenly to lean in closer, the shadows playing across their aged facades with the long-forgotten names of lost relatives carved across their fronts growing a shade darker, as if they were huddling together, frowning and judging me, about to deal with the trespassing elf that had only just destroyed one of their ancient own so very recklessly.  
“Sorry,” I mouthed to no one in particular and quickly shrugged these paranoid tendencies off, sprang to my feet and continued to pursue my fleeing rabbit.  
The man was already disappearing again, but I would not let it happen, would not let him get away. Not now, not when I´d come so far, not when I was so close to eventually getting him! He bounded in between and across towering headstones, out into a part of the cemetery where no mausoleums obscured the view, were the highest stones reached to only the height of my hips, where his cowled head bobbed up and down in headless flight. I stopped, shaking my head at the stupidity and recklessness of this particular individual. Either he was more cunning and powerful than I thought and as soon as I took another shot at him all hell would break loose around me, or he was – as I increasingly feared – just incredibly dumb and ill-accustomed to what happened when an elvish sharp-shooter was on somebody´s tracks. I selected one of my most precious and rare shafts, and bow and arrow were ready and notched in less than the time it took me to draw the next breath. The missile flew in a straight, level and predetermined line and buried itself in the middle of the back of the still running butcher, who grunted at long last now, stumbled ahead for a few further paces and finally collapsed in a groaning heap on the ground. I took off at a sprint again, wanting to get to him before he could dislodge the missile, before he could pull off another of his tricks, but there was no need to worry, no need to fret, because when I reached the site, the murderer lay on the frozen ground in a tangled pile of limbs, earth and stones and a long, enveloping brown robe, and was still struggling to comprehend what had happened to him, what had brought him down like this, when I came skidding to a stop right in front of him, no two yards away. I caught sight of a pale face, sparkling eyes and not much more than that, because he quickly let the dark cape fall over his eyes again and held up his hands, fingers wriggling and lips moving in matching enchantments, but to his immense surprise and my quiet satisfaction, his magic didn’t work.  
“Wondering about where your mojo has gone?”, I sneered and bent over him to unmask the murderer´s face and unravel the villain´s identity once and for all. “Try the bullet in your back. It´s got wards against all kinds of magic carved in all along its tip. Magician´s gift and really quite effective, as experience shows. As long as it remains in your body, influences your blood circle and keeps your power contained, you won´t do any harm with these chubby little fingers of yours. In fact, you will do no harm at all anymore, not after I´m through with you.”  
The hunched form in front of my feet stilled suddenly and all struggles to right himself or pull himself together ceased all at once, the murderer going slack all over, so that for a second I even thought I had hit him in a more fatal spot than I had originally planned to, and he was dead already. I frowned and knelt down beside him to tear away the mask and look into his face, but just as I touched the fringes, about to yank the fabric from his face, both his feet came up in a very, very forceful blow to the gut, connecting to my stomach with a violence that sent me sprawling on the ground a few meters away, desperately gasping for breath. That had been unforeseeable! He shouldn’t have been able to pull off these kinds of stunts with an arrow eating away at his spinal cord, with something that deadly arresting his motions. He must be stronger by far than originally anticipated. Damn these magicians, I cursed anew as I heaved myself back on to my feet, moaning loudly in the process. My abdomen felt like it had been mashed to pieces and was just about to be worked through a meat grinder.  
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” grunted the murderer who was already back up in a standing position and now came at me with both his fists raised challengingly. “You see, I´m not only a magician by profession, I´m also a pretty awesome combat fighter. Nobody will best me tonight!”  
I straightened up again to my full height – stomach protesting, giving a sudden lurch as if it wanted to empty itself out onto the rocky floor as soon as I started moving again, but I grit my teeth and swallowed the rising bile, forcing my body to obey – and pranced back and out of the reach of the next swing of the magician´s arm. And while I had to give it to him that he had succeeded to thoroughly surprise me with his sudden attack before, I quickly learned now that he was definitely no close-combat specialist, no matter what he may claim. His punches were uncoordinated and sloppy, and he was much too slow to really keep up with me, especially now, after I had learned the hard way what he was capable of and had stopped fooling around and just went for the real deal. He was surprisingly strong and enduring, given the fact that he had an iron arrow sticking out of his back, a shot that should at least have temporarily paralyzed any other human creature for hours on end, disenabling his legs and all other parts of his body from the hips on downwards. Yet, he stomped and clomped about the deserted graveyard like he was completely unperturbed and undisturbed by its presence in between the bones of his spine. Indeed, the only thing it seemed to have any effect on whatsoever was his magic, because although he tried a few more times, he did not succeed in sending anything more than the most basic of flashes of power my way and soon gave up altogether, to concentrate on getting me with his fists and feet alone. Which, as time was wearing on and he was getting out of breath more and more as I jumped in and out too quick for him to react properly to my blows and punches, turned increasingly desperate, especially when he started to realize he was and may indeed just be losing it after all.  
“You cannot best me,” he yelled and lunged forward, just as I stepped aside, connected my armoured elbow to his face, one knee to his abdomen as he hunched over, and a last and forceful kick with the heel of my foot into his crotch, knocking him out at long last, and sent him sprawling again in front of my feet. This time, he did not get straight up again. He panted and grunted, seemingly thoroughly done for by now, and didn’t resist as I bent over him, hands empty yet, but not about to be fooled by any act or show of weakness again. I was wary of his every movement and would be on guard from now on, wherever he was concerned.  
“Who are you?”, I asked as soon as I had unmasked him and stared into a hard-pinched, tight visage with a ruffled beard swallowing up the entire lower half of a wrinkly face and a tuft of long, unruly brown hair dishevelled by sweat and snow and the cape I had just yanked off his head, plastered around his elongated face. The man was small in build, smaller than me in fact, but much broader in diameter, had two dark brown, almost black eyes sunk deep into his face that exuded a kind of conniving and uncanny lustre and surprisingly bright lips beneath all the facial hair. He panted hard and his cheeks were coloured red, though if it was only from the wild flight through the deserted streets or in equal parts from the little repartee we´d just finished, I couldn’t say. “Speak, rascal, or I shall slit your throat here and now!”  
“Hah, as if you could,” replied the man squirming on the floor right in front of my feet. His nose was bloody and parts of his lips chapped, and he had interlocked both his hands behind his back in a truly tangled pattern that hurt my head even from merely watching how he had to stretch and bend and overstrain his muscles and tendons to reach the shaft of the arrow that pierced his backside just at a spot where no hand of his own would ever be able to pull it out again that easily. At least, not without fainting first, I´d see to that. No, it would not be as easy as the man hoped it would go. He tried anyways, and knowing what pain, despair and distress this caused him, the desperation with which he needed to free my missile in order to get all his strength back, to have the magic flow throughout his body and light his veins on fire again, was worth the waiting and I decided he could well do with a little bit of suffering before I killed him for good, showing him just the littlest of fractions of the panic each of his victims must have endured just before he slit their throats or stabbed them to death in all sorts of places. Both of us stalled for time, I knew that, so both of us were willing to talk, at least to a certain extent.  
“Give me a name, now!”, I demanded. “Who are you?”  
“The name´s Calixto,” spat the murderer and said it as if it meant something, as if I should know it. I didn’t, though, as I wasn’t the most informed about all the citizens of Windhelm in general and couldn’t expect to keep track about each and every one of the people living behind these drab and constricting walls in particular. “Calixto Corrium, and you´d better remember that name, cause I´ll make you repeat it just when I am about to kill you in your sleep, bloody assassin. I´ll carve my initials into your skeleton a thousand times over, after I´ve drained your body of blood and had my fun with it!”  
“Oh, so that´s what these symbols on the dead woman´s bodies meant? They were your markings, your signature, weren´t they?” I grimaced in an expression of disgust and looked down at the puny butcher writhing punily on the floor of an ancient grave. “In your stead, I´d be more careful about what I said from now on. You´re a murderer. A murderer and a coward. You´re a criminal and an outlaw and deserve to be brought to justice. And believe me, there´s nothing more I want to do tonight than bring you to justice. In case you haven’t noticed, I´m in a pretty bad mood right now. You ruined my date!”  
“Oh, did I, indeed? So, what do you want from me now? Another one?”, snarled the murderer in a wheezing kind of noise. On regarding him a little bit closer, I realized that his nose looked somehow askew and I took glee in the fact that I must have broken it somewhere along our fight. “Is that why you followed me here?”  
“What do I want?”, I echoed, ignoring his quippy remark, keeping my distance, letting the magic work. It would only take a little while longer and his defensive mechanisms would be overridden, the magic protecting his flesh captured and imprisoned into my very own magic arrow. “I want justice. I want to kill you for what you did. But before I do so, I want you to answer me a question.”  
“Sure, whatever,” shrugged the other. “As I am just now only lying around here uselessly anyways, with nothing better to do than stare up at you, so, why not. Please, fire away.”  
I narrowed my eyes, looking for the catch, looking for a trap, a hidden snare that would engulf me if I did not kill him instantly, that would get back at me if I didn’t end it at once, but as far as I could discern, there was nothing, no one waiting to jump on me in the black darkness all around, no hidden costs of letting him talk for just a minute longer, before finally ridding the world of his disgusting presence. The magic in the enchanted arrow must still be at work, because I could still see the fringes of his wound fizzling in a tinted blue, speaking of the magical energy just being sucked out of his body and captured in the especially designed interior of one of my most precious arrows.  
“Then answer me this,” I continued, stalling for time. “Why? Just… tell me why. Why would you do such a thing? Why kill all these women? Why be so cruel and end their lives like that?”  
“The sheer satanic pleasure of it?!”, answered the murderer with a smirk. “Killing, just because I can!? Because I want to? Yeah, I guess that´s about it.”  
“I don’t believe you,” I said.  
“Well, do believe me or don’t, it´s all the same to me,” huffed the darkly robed man, fingers slick with blood by now, still unable to grasp the shaft of the magic missile, still unable to get a grip on the arrow and pull it back out. He winced and I smirked spitefully. “It doesn’t matter anyways, does it? You got me in a tight spot now and you won´t let me go, no matter what I tell you, will you?”  
“Try me,” I answered. “Try starting with the truth, and I might begin to contemplate. I might even believe you, if you´re convincing enough.”  
“No, you won´t,” sniffed the murderer and much as I would have liked it, he sounded neither panicked nor about to freak out about his rapidly approaching death. Not as much as I would have liked him to anyways, not at all in fact. He seemed calm and composed and completely prepared for what would inexorably follow next. It seemed almost as if he´d accepted his fate and as if he didn’t want to change it, even if he´d had the chance to. “Not if the truth is that I like being master of the death. Gives me a very special and very… invigorating feeling. You know, like having something big in my hands, something enormous and important, that I am – like the gods – able to control that power for a moment. Yes,” he mused, speaking ponderingly as if he was only talking to himself. “It made me… a god, a force of life and death over the lives of these puny good-for-nothing wenches. It made me strong, made me potent. Killing them made me feel… so good, so… alive!”  
“You´re sick,” I sneered, propelled backwards by revulsion. “So, it was all just a sport for you? Nothing more than a twisted sating of your vile desires?”  
The man chuckled, lying in front of me on the floor and a sudden flare of hot rage coursed through me. He couldn’t laugh at this. Not like that, not here, not after what he had just confessed, not after what he had done tonight. He was… abominable!  
“Look at you,” he said. “All honed words and pretentious, conceited language. But what are you underneath? You were sent here to follow me, to kill me, right?” He didn’t wait for a reply, but continued as if he knew the answer right from the beginning. “Yes, indeed you were. Then, are you really any different than me? When you do this, when you kill me, you will find fulfilling and joy in snuffing my light out, I can see it in your eyes. So, tell me, what makes you any different than me, presumptuous elf? What makes you a better man than the one you are just about to off?”  
“Easy,” I snarled. “For starters, I don’t kill innocents!”  
“Oh, oh, oh,” laughed the crazy man in what looked like real and honest merriment. “Now that´s not true. You know that as well as I do. Nobody who kills professionally can say that of himself. Nobody can claim to be a saint.” He cocked his head and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Have you known all your victims personally? Did you know their stories, their backgrounds, before you offed them? Did you try to find out why they did what they did? Maybe they didn’t have another chance, maybe they had someone to take care of, a family to safe, maybe… there are so many maybes. Did you even care?”  
I snorted again, the words creeping beneath my stony mask, clingy fingers groping around the insides of my brain, wanting to make me feel guilty, wanting to weaken me, but I refused to let them get to me, refused to listen to what this twisted creature uttered in self-defence.  
“Maybe,” I said. “So, you´re saying I should start questioning your motives. That something more serious and righteous might hide behind your straightforward words? That, in truth, in your heart, you are one of them? An innocent? You can´t possibly expect me to believe that, can you?”  
His features contorted into a feline grin again and he said: “Of course not. Just stalling for time.”  
And suddenly, as in a last flare before he succumbed to his fate, he lashed out his hand and a few iced crystals fell from the one, while only the weakest jets of punily flickering fire shot forth from the other. Both hit me quite unexpectedly – I had not seen that coming – but the ice-crystals hitting my right shoulder just clung to the fabric of my armour like thousands of their fellow snowflakes before, not even piercing the topmost layer of clothing to get to my flesh beneath and hurt it the way his former blasts of magic would have, if I hadn’t found refuge behind the headstone, and the fire from his second hand missed its mark altogether and singed only the fringes of the night-black cap Ralof had given me for warmth last winter. I jumped back quickly and patted the fire out, glowering at the waning magician darkly.  
“Scoundrel,” I hissed. “I love this cloak. It was a gift from my lover, more precious to me than the rest of my entire family! How dare you attempt to destroy it?”  
“It is not the only thing I´ll destroy tonight, nor will it be the last,” wheezed the villain through his broken nose. “Believe me. After I get this thing out of my shoulder and get my strength up again, there´ll be no stopping me. They should have thought twice about sending someone like you after me. I mean, come on, an elf? Seriously? It´s as if they wanted to fail capturing me.”  
He laughed his crazy laugh and crept back on his elbows until his back came up to one of the old headstones and all further retreat was arrested. His fingers groped at the feathers of the arrow in his shoulders, but he´d never be able to pull that one out by himself, not when there were tiny spikes and hooks on the tip that were made for lodging deep and painfully in the flesh of my victims. But he didn’t know that, and his face contorted in pain as he moved the shaft with bloody fingers.  
“An elf for an elf,” I replied through gritted teeth and took a carefully measured step closer. “You know, as the saying goes.” He didn’t look ready to start another attack yet, but he had surprised me before, so I would not take any chances and keep my distance until the magic in the arrow had done what it could and drained him of all but the most basic amalgamation of power.  
“No, I am fairly sure it didn’t go like that,” said the murderer conversationally. “Wasn’t it more along the lines of an eye for an eye? Maybe you should just take one of mine – I´ll even let you, have actually never really liked my left one all that much – and leave again, leave me alone here?”  
“I don’t care how it goes,” I spat and in a single motion I was at him, drew my sword and set the tip of it readily against his quivering clavicle. “You killed one of my kind. Tonight. And three others even before that. So, before I kill you, I will let you suffer for every single life you took, for every woman you mutilated and hurt, until you wish it would not have been an elf who found you here tonight, least of all an elf like me, I promise you that, murderer!”  
“No way,” panted the magician and had the boldness to throw back his head and laugh in a sort of gurgling and nasal way, his nose streaming blood, his teeth shining abnormally white in the sparse light of the clouded night sky overhead. “That´s not gonna happen, puny elf. My death is not supposed to come like this. I refuse to die by your unworthy hands. Prepare to be amazed, sucker!”  
And just like that, just when I was moving my arm for the final and most deadly blow to his heart, to finally relieve the wretch from this life and existence (which he certainly deserved) and end his pain (which he didn’t deserve, not at all, not yet anyways), he snapped his broken fingers with a sigh and a moan. In seconds, everything – his hair, his face, his clothes, his hands, his feet – was ignited like a pile of dry plywood and combusted into flame. I jumped back surprised and goggled at the burning human form in front of me. The fire had an unnatural greenish-blue tinge around the fringes and was burning more incandescent than most other things I had ever seen, including dragon-fire, which was the hottest and deadliest substance I knew of in the whole universe. The entire charade lasted for barely a full minute, the man never once emitting a sound, never so much as screaming or giving any sign of sufferance, and when it was done, the fire ceased to exist as abruptly as it had sprung to life, taking all the light and all the warmth with it in the process, and a sudden gust of wind scattered the still upright form, causing the butcher to crumble to ashes before my very feet, quickly scattering among the snow and the muck on the frozen ground.  
I was confused, puzzled and astonished at what had just taken place in front of my very eyes – if I hadn’t witnessed it myself, indeed, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it in recounting – but finally shrugged my shoulders and retreated all the way through the graveyard, up the steps, around Candlehearth Hall and down again towards the place where Sadri suffered. It was a coward´s death, that was for sure, nobody (not even a sneaky elf like I was) able to find any honour in that way of passing, but he was dead after all. And on the long run, that was the only thing that really counted. The Butcher was dead, the murderer taken care of, and the streets of Windhelm finally safe again at night, for male and female alike – or at least as safe as any nordic town was when the light was low and crime thrived under the cover of darkness in back alleys and amongst its inhabitants. But that was none of my concerns and certainly no problem I ever planned to investigate. It was just the way of the world.  
When I got back to where I had left Ra and all the other townsfolk behind, I couldn’t get a proper look at the victim, just saw a handful of liveried Stormcloaks and by all appearance Wuunferth the Unliving, the court mage of Ulfric himself, squatting besides an unmoving shape on the ground, the other people and the snowfall that had just started up again successfully shrouding all that was happening from my tired gaze. Ra stood alone off to the left, a part of the onlooking spectators yet strangely standing out, as if he himself did not think he belonged anywhere near here, near them, near anyone. I sidled up to him and he didn’t even react when he heard my voice by his shoulder, just kept on looking straight ahead over the bent heads of all those standing before him.  
“Did you get him?”, he asked, strangely monotonously. “Could you kill him?”  
“I did,” I nodded jubilantly. “Though he sure as Oblivion was a crazy specimen. A strange sort of creature indeed. But it doesn’t matter now, I took care of him.” I opened my mouth to recount my story and tell him of the fight I had had with the Butcher, but stopped when I saw the expression on his face, the hard lines around his mouth. It was only then that I noticed he didn’t seem to share my satisfaction, didn’t share my triumph, didn’t seem to want to.  
“Ra, what´s wrong? Why are you looking like that?” He didn’t answer, just stepped out of the ring of onlookers and cast his eyes down sadly, shaking his head. “Ra, talk to me,” I insisted, tugging at his sleeve. “What happened?”  
“She´s dead, Tabu,” answered Ralof at long last. When he turned to face me, I could see the grief and the loss etched all over his formerly so happy face, the dead of a random townswoman (if a nice and a friendly one, but nonetheless a person he did not even know personally, hadn’t even once talked to in his life), seemed to throw him off track. I adored this vulnerability so much, this sympathy, this concern for everyone that walked the earth alongside him, his simple empathy for the whole world, it was one of the things I loved most about him. Among others, simply because I did not share this character trait, had never been able to be as kind-hearted and empathetic as my lovable Stormcloak. “She´s dead, and I couldn’t do anything about it,” he continued in a grave voice and his sparkling eyes seemed subdued and clouded over. Already, the crowd was thinning out, the curious onlookers and spectators retreating to their respective homes and houses, now that all the action was seemingly over, now that nothing else would be going on, nobody apparently too touched by the life that had just winked out in front of their very eyes, none of them grieving Sadri´s death all too much. Instead, all the town´s grief seemed to have transferred and been channelled in Ra alone and he looked hunched and positively stooped under it, under the weight of it all, like a pennant without a pole, like a ship without any wind in its sails. He looked tired and sad and guilty. I quickly stepped around a puddle of blood and took his hand unobtrusively.  
“I am sorry,” I whispered so quietly that only he could hear me. “But it is not your fault, I know that. You did everything you could. You gave your best.”  
“Which wasn’t enough,” he replied. “Which feels like it is never enough. I couldn’t keep her alive, I couldn´t save her.”  
“You can´t save everyone. Nobody can,” I said and held him while a lonely tear started its slow descent across his cold cheek, vanishing into the fabric of his collar, his armour looking strangely uncomplete without the rich blue cloak on his shoulders and the voluminous fabric all around his throat. “It is not your fault.”  
He didn’t answer, didn’t react anymore, so we coated ourselves in sad silence and together we stood there, beside the corpse, as the body was collected and given over to the priests of Talos according to nordic procedure, who were residing in Windhelm and would take care of all its dead and deceased. We were questioned by the palace guards afterwards and told to follow them to the barracks to tell them everything that had happened and what we had been able to learn about the butcher before he ignited himself.  
After the palace guards had questioned us and had made sure we had told them everything they could ever wanted to know about this cruel occurrence, they finally let us go. Exhausted, bloody, shocked and cold we returned to Candlehearth Hall way after midnight and made our way as silently as we could to the room Elda had so considerately prepared for us. I had planned all this to go so differently, had wanted to present Elda (one of the people I knew the longest in Skyrim) and Ra (my new one-and-only) accordingly, and sit together around the fire, talk animatedly and friendly, long into the night. Now, Ra was depressed and dirty, sadly slinking off to the baths with barely more than a word and Elda as well as most others except the night watch, a scrawny little boy still in his teens with just the beginnings of a soft fluff showing around his upper lip, were already asleep and the entire Hall darkened for the night. Said night-guard-boy merely raised an eyebrow at our appearance in his domain and at that time of the night, and simply nodded silently as we proved our identities as guests of this house and started to slink past without bothering him, without giving any trouble or causing any kind of drunken inconvenience.  
In our room, the candles had long since burnt low and the fire had been reduced to barely more than softly glowing embers and ash in the grate. The lavender scent had evaporated almost entirely and I felt suddenly tired and itchy and prickly all over and just wanted this night to end, just wanted to get into bed as soon as possible and sink into the deep and bottomless pit of sleep to forget about this evil, cruel world out there once and for all. At least the chamber was still comfortably warm, I thought, and as I stripped to my underclothes and slipped under the soft covers of the huge double bed, it felt like I was softly reclining into the loving embrace of a feathery god. I sank into an almost immediate slumber seconds before my head hit the comfy pillow and only resurfaced again in parts when Ra returned and climbed under the blanket to cuddle up next to me.  
“Mmm,” I noted when I blinked groggily and spread my arms wide to pull him in, his head coming to rest warmly against my chest, his arm winding loosely around my torso. “You smell good.”  
"Soap,” he said monosyllabically and sunk into glum silence. I was ready to go straight back to sleep, to stay like this and be pulled under for good, but couldn’t bear to see him suffer like this, couldn’t bear to see him beat himself up about this, about what had happened tonight.  
“It´s really not your fault, you know,” I said. “That Sadri died, that what happened, happened. You did everything you could. There´s nothing more anyone could have tried. Some things are just not meant to be.”  
“I know,” he said after a while. “I know it isn’t, but I was right there. Right beside her. I… I should have been able to do something. To at least say something. But I saw her die, Tabu, I saw the light go out in her eyes and knew there was nothing on this earth left for me to try, left that I could do. And I hate this feeling, I really do. I hate it every time something like this happens, every time I see good people die, see how the gods take back one of their creations way before their time is up. And I keep wondering… why? Why do they give me the chance to help her and then take her away all the same? Why would the gods taunt me like this? I felt… powerless, impotent, weak… It´s nothing I ever want to be. I wanted to help her, safe her. But I wasn’t enough…“  
I kissed him on the forehead lightly and brushed some of the hair back out of his face, though he did not look up to meet my eyes. “Ra, you´re positively the best and most selfless man I have ever met. You are kind and helpful, sensitive and caring. Take it from someone who knows you as intimate as I do, you are certainly enough, believe me. Do you believe me?”  
“If you say so.” He started to turn to his side and rolled out of my arms, coiling up for the night.  
I sighed, but didn’t say anything else than “Ok, whatever… Good night” and curled into a foetal position as well.  
“Tabu, wait.”  
I turned around and found his gaze utterly transfixing and strangely in turmoil. “What, Ralof?”  
“I´ve thought about what you said to me earlier. Down in the Grey Quarter. About… you know. And you were right,” he continued. “You were right about everything. No matter how hard we try, no matter what we do, this will never work out the way we want it to, the way I secretly long to. This relationship, everything. There´s always gonna be something, always the next mission, the next job, the next case. Just look at what happened with this evening, what happens if we want to have only one small night all to ourselves. We will never be at peace, we will never have any time for ourselves, just to relax, just for us. Not with our professions, not with the way the world is turning, not if we don’t change something first. And you were right about another thing too.”  
“And what would that be?”, I whispered and circled in close to him again, head cocked in wonder of what might come next, a curious feeling spreading through my stomach.  
“I love you. I love you at least as much as you love me, and I don’t want to see you go to Solitude with Zulu just a few hours from now any more than you want to leave. I need you. Here. With me.”  
“So, what are you suggesting we do about it? What are you trying to say?”  
Ra looked at me long and intently and spoke only after I had completely lost myself again in his fiery eyes. “Let´s run away together,” he said.  
“Run away?”, I echoed, puzzled. “Are you serious?”  
“Yes. Just you and me,” he clarified, “no obligations, no jobs, no Galmar, no Ulfric, no Zulu, no butcher, no anyone. Just the two of us out there in the world, together. Let´s take a few weeks off, a few months even, if we want to, just for ourselves. We could go somewhere nice and warm, someplace both you and I liked, and look for somewhere to stay, something solid, something… more permanent than all this.”  
“Do you actually mean that?” I was so utterly stunned now that I gaped at him open mouthed and probably with a very dumb expression on my face. He took hold of my hand under the blanket and nodded. “What you said, are you suggesting to move in together? To… to settle down together?” He nodded again, gravely this time. “Do you think we are ready for this, do you think our relationship is ready for this?”  
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly and his lips brushed my shoulders just where the collarbone disappeared beneath my robe. I felt my breath catch in my throat. “But we could give it a try. I´m certainly ready for that. Are you?”  
“And you think we would be closer like this? That it would work out? Would you be happy?”  
“That depends…,” he said, put two fingers under my chin and tilted my head up so that we could lock eyes in the dim light of the dying fire. “Would you?”  
I looked at him and just couldn’t measure the tenderness Ra´s stare awoke in me, still, even after two entire years of staring into these blue depths almost incessantly, still their fire amazed me. “Yes,” I whispered tonelessly. “Yes, I think I would. In fact, I feel almost entirely sure about it.”  
“Then we´d best start looking for a house somewhere, shall we?”, he said and continued in barely more than the merest breath. “I love you, Tabu.”  
“I love you too,” I whispered back and closed my eyes.  
Ralof shimmied closer and buried his head in my neck and we fell asleep alongside each other in a tight and reassuring embrace that didn’t dissolve until the following morning.


End file.
